- [announcer] funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation and hillco partners, a texas government affairs consultancy and by klru's producers circle, ensuring local programming that reflects the character and interests of the greater austin, texas, community. - i'm evan smith, he's a cnn commentator and columnist for the daily beast whose latest book is too dumb to fail, how the gop betrayed the reagan revolution to win elections and how it can reclaim its conservative roots. he's matt k. lewis, this is overhead. he's matt k. lewis, this is overhead. let's be honest, is this about the ability to learn or is this about the experience of not having been taught properly? how have you avoided what has befallen other nations in africa? i hate to say that he'd made his own bed, but you caused him to sleep in it. you saw a problem and over time, took it on. let's start with the sizzle before we get to the steak,

are you gonna run for president? i think i just got an f from you. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) matt lewis, welcome. - good to be here. - good to see you, so this book, great book was published during the republican primary so it's 18 months ago, plus or minus, as we sit here today. were you right, as you look back, to be worried about conservatism? - absolutely. so it came out in january 2016, right before the iowa caucuses so i started writing this maybe in 2014 and wrote a lot of it in 2015. - and god, who could have predicted in 2014 and 2015 where we'd be today? - right, so donald trump wasn't even running when i first started writing this book, but even without donald trump, i saw that there were problems in conservatism, that there was an identity crisis. and i think what we're seeing right now is the manifestation of that. conservatism, is it populist, does it believe in free trade or does it believe in protectionism?

this is just one issue that we're still wrestling over. - right, let's get the big one out of the way, is donald trump a conservative? - no, he's not a conservative. - is he a republican? can i go down from there? (audience laughs) by process of elimination, let's arrive at something. - i think if you declare yourself a republican, then you are a republican. - if you win the presidency running on the republican party line, you are a republican. - yeah. - but he's not a conservative. - he's not a conservative but i would argue he has a chance, ironically, to become maybe the most significant conservative. or his agenda could actually be the most conservative agenda despite the fact that he himself is not a conservative. - will it be his agenda, will it be the agenda of the people he's brought into the administration, or will it be the agenda of conservatives in congress who recognize that he is essentially a trojan horse and that they're riding along inside his belly. - i think the latter, but one of the things we saw just the other week is neil gorsuch being confirmed as a supreme court justice.

- conservatives love this, right? - conservatives love it, credible, competent, experience, but also has that conservative judicial philosophy. - in his first decision as a justice, refused to end the executions in arkansas, right? and joining with alito and thomas and roberts, and joining with alito and thomas and roberts, everything that conservatives could have hoped for, there's that fifth vote, there's that fifth voice. - [matt] and it's a lifetime appointment. - lifetime appointment, he's under 50. - and then who knows how many additional supreme court picks donald trump may get? - are you kidding me, ruth bader ginsburg is gonna hold on to her robe until, they're gonna have to pull it out of her hands, you know that. - they should give her a gym membership or something. if i were a liberal, i would do that. - seriously, yeah. like pet pills, i totally agree. so why did conservatives decide that trump was acceptable to them? because if you recall, the entire republican primary was litigated along the lines of he's not legitimately one of us.

he's not legitimately one of us. - right, so part of what happened is that the republican base turned out to be not as conservative, not as philosophically conservative as any of us thought. so the average person out there, my dad was a prison guard in western maryland, i went to college in west virginia, my mom lives in pennsylvania, she drove people to the polls to vote for donald trump, she doesn't know who edmund burke is except for what she read in my book, but she has a conservative instinct, a populist conservative instinct that donald trump tapped into in a way that ted cruz and marco rubio and john kasich never could. - but populism used to be more of a democratic rather than republican adjective, right? rather than republican adjective, right? you would say populist democrat, you wouldn't necessarily think of populism as associated with what we would know in the contemporary sense, politically, as conservatism. - yeah, i mean i think that that guy, the working class white guy who lived in ohio or west virginia was a union member, maybe,

leaned democratic and obviously over the last decades, you had reagan democrats. - the pivot point may have in fact been the reagan democrat. - and i think now we may have finally reached that point where all of those people are republican. where all of those people are republican. - did the democrats lose the working class white voter or did republicans win the working class white voter? - i think democrats, i mean, look, honestly, it's always a combination of two things, you can say the same thing about the south, did the democrats lose the south or did republicans win it? and it's always a combination but i think that democrats essentially abandoned that vote. they went for the coalition of the emerging, the obama coalition and it's perfectly understandable, i mean, if you look at demographics. - african-americans, hispanics, asian-americans, young people, women, gays, and lesbians, that was that coalition that got him elected in 2012. - and it's a perfectly rational, if you're a strategist and you're thinking ahead, how do we win the majority

in the future. - it's the ascendent population groups, right? - yep. but in so doing, you abandon all of these working class white men, mostly, but women too and i think that when you look at the way that america, the american system, our system, the electoral college, the way the congressional districts work, it matters and i think, here's the thing, i always thought that marco rubio was probably the best republican, the best conservative that republicans should have nominated. - well he'd be able to straddle both the old republican base and this emerging demographic. and this emerging demographic. - so that was my idea but there's no way that he would have won pennsylvania and ohio and wisconsin. and maybe he would have found a different map, a different route to victory, who knows, but it's entirely plausible that donald trump was the only republican who could have won that election and he will go down in history as one of the most consequential conservatives ever because of supreme court

picks, if nothing else, and he's not even a conservative. - you also have to assume that having won the election as he did in 2016, winning those states, michigan, wisconsin, pennsylvania, you can't assume that those are gonna just revert back to the democrats in 2020 against him or in 2020 for with a new republican, because now that map has shifted, presumably that shift remains in place. - absolutely, what we could be witnessing is a reordering. - a realignment. - a realignment and it goes back to what we were talking about with the south. - right and of course the flip, though, as you know, the flip is what democrats are trying to say now is the silver lining is, well if we give the upper midwest or the rust belt to the republicans, well that's okay because now we're gonna get. - arizona, texas. - implausible as this may seem, we're gonna get georgia, we're gonna get arizona, and the big prize will be texas because demographic inevitably will be this tsunami that will overwhelm republicans and conservatives. are you buying it? - well i think if you're a republican, you should fear that because that's a possible,

plausible outcome and places like arizona that have been republican or texas, i mean, look, if you're a republican, if you start off a presidential election losing california and texas, it's basically game over. - mathematically it's hard. - it's pretty much game over. so that's the real risk for republicans. i think the good news for republicans is that these, i think that things move quicker than they used to. one of my fears about donald trump was that he would rebrand the republican party and permanently tarnish the reputation and the brand of the republican party, making it sort of a white identity politics party that would. - you were worried that he would or you've decided that he has? - well, one part-- - 'cause you understand that's the knock, 100 days in, we're still talking about president bannon, and in some respects, that latter characterization is in the minds of some already come to fruition. - i think one of the things, so part of it is i have come to terms with it, i think part of the reason

that my analysis has been a little bit better this year than some of my counterparts is that i went through the 12 stages of grief before they did. when donald trump took over the republican party and basically took over or defeated conservatism, that's when i began, so my mourning period began sooner and i think there were a lot of liberals commentators who woke up that morning in november thinking that hillary clinton was gonna win. and so they went through denial, what is it, grappling, and so they went through denial, what is it, grappling, make deals or whatever. - but you don't deny that that white nationalism, however you phrased it, i don't wanna put words in your mouth but that basically that strain of this political discussion has been on the upswing. - oh yeah. - and it is both a knock on him but also it's hard to say that there isn't at least a little bit of that baked in. - right, well i think there's a couple of things, i think there's the white identity politics thing

which is not good, i'm against identity politics in general, which is not good, i'm against identity politics in general, it's part of the reason i became a conservative is i don't like the thing where you have to vote for me because you're an african-american woman or you have to vote for this guy because you're hispanic so i don't like tribalism in general, i think that politics should be about ideas and philosophy so i didn't like it when liberals did it, i didn't like it when trump did it, sort of played the white identity politics card. but that is, i don't like it, but it's not necessarily evil. but there is an evil version of this, of course, which is the alt right, the white supremacy which is the alt right, the white supremacy or white nationalism side of it, which really manifested during this race. i think some of it actually turned out to be russian trolls who were meddling in the election and trying to stir things up and be divisive, but there's no doubt that there are people out there, this guy richard spencer, for example. - so let me come back to trump. so is the question about trump's conservatism best thought of through the lens of who he is personally

and the politics he espouses or is it better talked about through a policy door, so so far he hasn't had a lot of policy successes in the first 100 days but we have a sense of what his administration stands for on healthcare, there's been some discussion around taxes, there's been some discussion around trade, so do you consider those policy positions as we've come to understand them to this point to be conservative as you define? - i think what we've seen is a hybrid and so i'm a little bit optimistic about this. my fear was that trumpism and bannonism would completely displace conservatism and i think what we've seen is actually a pretty good blend. so first of all, steve bannon has been neutralized, i think, and that people like h.r. mcmaster, who replaced mike flynn as national security advisor are good influences and that they will have trump's ear. and plus, when steve bannon fights with trump's son-in-law, jared kushner, it's kinda hard to win that fight so i think that steve bannon has been,

he'll stick around but i don't think he'll have the influence, which i think is good, so what we now have is, rather than bannonism taking over the republican party, taking over conservatism, i think you have a hybrid where donald trump, his strike in syria i think was a very, to me, it was a reagan-esque thing to do, it showed decisiveness, it showed some moral clarity. totally different than what bannon believes in, totally different than what donald trump ran on. you have the nominations we talked about of neil gorsuch, which is a great conservative pick. but then you're still gonna have, he got out of the trans-pacific partnership, so you're gonna have some populist trade stuff. i think it's gonna be a blend that conservatives can live with and actually, if you look at some of, he's been using this thing called the crc, congressional review act, cra, congressional review act, where you can repeal obama-era regulations that weren't congressionally-approved, that were agencies

just sort of unilaterally passed them. some good things are happening if you're a conservative. - i'm having a hard time, candidly, i'm having a hard time understanding what conservatives don't like about this guy because everything that's happened in the first 100 days is everything, not everything, many things, that conservatives had said for eight years, oh boy, oh boy, if only we get control of this operation, we're gonna do xyz or undo xyz. - yeah, and you could argue if a mainstream conservative like a marco rubio had gotten in, or john kasich. - what would be different? conservatives might like kasich less, right? - yeah, and part of the reason for that is that i think that people like rubio and kasich aren't just ideologically conservative, they're temperamentally conservative and donald trump is here to sort of break things and donald trump is here to sort of break things and create chaos, so when you have the nomination of neil gorsuch, you had first of all mitch mcconnell refusing to even have hearings refusing to even have hearings

on the merrick garland nomination. - by the way, you good with that? - i'm very good with that. - you are. you don't think that there is weapons-grade hutspa in the republicans complaining about how neil gorsuch was treated when merrick garland was left outside the store pressing his nose against the glass? - well it's rank hypocrisy, i'll be the first. - rank hypocrisy. - absolutely. no but i'm okay with it, and look. - but why are you okay with it? if it's rank hypocrisy, why are you okay with it? - well because at some point, politics is a bloodless war. - well because at some point, politics is a bloodless war. and although i try to encourage civility and comity as much as possible. - and theoretically, non-hypocrisy. - theoretically. but think about it this way, mitch mcconnell could have done something else, he could have gone through this charade, of course we're gonna have, this charade, of course we're gonna have, we're gonna meet with merrick garland and then they could have held a vote and defeated him. - we're gonna pretend to give him a serious. - they could have gone through the motions, pretended that they were gonna give him, and then they could have just defeated him.

and then, so i think in a way what mcconnell did was more transparent. - intellectually honest. - more honest, and more humane to merrick garland. - right, but you understand that occasionally the shoe finds its way onto the other foot. - totally, totally. i understand why liberals are upset about this. - if in year seven, the democrats happen to control the senate and the republicans see an opportunity to put somebody on the supreme court who donald trump would minate and the docrats you guys a gonna be go witthat, right? 'til year seven, they could do it year four, right? - well we don't know the guy's gonna get reelected, not in an election year. - no you don't know, we could say, there's a tradition, during election years. but let me just make this point. mitch mcconnell has been on the right, attacked as a rhino, mitch mcconnell has been on the right, attacked as a rhino, a wimp, a squish, mitch mcconnell did more to advance conservatism than ted cruz has ever done. - in that one act. - in that one act. - well and also go back to the time that mitch mcconnell, i don't think this is in dispute,

said that my job as the leader of the republican party and the senate is to ensure that barack obama serves only one term, he wasn't successful, but his messaging has trailed along behind him and in that respect, mitch mcconnell has been a lot tougher in reputation than many people give him credit for. off of gorsuch and garland but onto this general question, you made a passing reference to donald trump did something different to what he had said he would do, i guess on syria. there are an awful lot of things that donald trump has done or not done that differ from what he said he would do or the long history of tweets, he would do or the long history of tweets, it's almost always the case these days that you have a policy position expressed by the trump administration and then some smartass reporter pulls up a tweet from 2012 that shows trump advocating for precisely the opposite thing. and at this point now, we all shrug at that. is that good that we're shrugging at it, is that just, eh, it's politics? i thought that that was actually a bad thing, to be completely opposite of what you said you were gonna do.

- see i would argue that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, that keeping your promises is overrated when you're donald trump because his promises were bad. i like the fact that he's flip-flopped. - you're in a happy marriage? - you're in a happy marriage? believing that the premise here is that keeping promises is overrated? - this is a guy who's evolved, flip-flopped, switched our way. switched our way. he's more sane, more conservative, more whatever. - so as long as he switches in your direction. - i'm okay with that. - hypocrisy and inconsistency are okay. - right, because i've already accepted the fact that i'm married to, we're married to this serial, you know. there's a famous joke that says, people say, "is donald trump gonna be impeached?" i say, no, he won't be impeached, he'll just leave us for a younger country. (laughing) - good one, good one. - paul begala actually told me that one. we know who we're in bed with, is my point. - why are we surprised?

- so if he gets his act together, i'm not gonna hold the things he said against him. - let me switch into, we have some time left but let me switch over to the question of the conservative media as opposed to conservative politics. this is an interesting moment to be considering, we're sitting here today as fox news is blowing up. the departure of bill o'reilly following the departure of roger ailes, the departure of gretchen carlson, the departure of greta, the departure of megyn kelly. really except for sean hannity, the network has had kind of an interesting relationship with the trump administration over the years. breitbart, on the ascent at least as a brand, you have a lot of conservatives, erick erickson, charlie sykes, hugh hewitt, who have become regular figures within the msm, see 'em on television, hear about them all the time. can you assess all this for me? i mean, you're part of this universe. conservatives have moved into view probably because of trump and his administration. - well it's really weird, i think there are a couple things happening that are almost contradictory.

on one hand, i think that we have seen some really positive development, i mean, i heard that bob costa, robert costa, is taking over. - washington week in review. - right, which, gwen ifill's show. - pbs program, he has been one of the very best political reporters in the country at the washington post but came from national review. - came from national review, bill buckley's conservative outlet, i'm now at the daily beast, i used to work at townhall.com. - ivana johnson is now at politico, she had been at national review before. - yeah, and then there are several of my colleagues that i worked with at the daily caller have gone. - brett stevens just left the wall street journal editorial to go to the new york times. - so one of the really good things is for years, it used to be that if you were a conservative, you were kind of ghettoized, you were stuck writing opinion and if you were on tv, it would be like, and if you were on tv, it would be like, joining us ryan lizza from the new yorker, so and so from the washington post, and ultra-conservative matt lewis. - right, exactly. - so we were labeled and it used to be that you could go

from like the new republic to the new york times but you could never go from national review to the washington post, and robert costa i think is maybe the most famous example now. so there's good things happening. i also think some of what's happening at fox is frankly good. - explain. - well it seems chaotic, but getting, i think bill o'reilly was not a force for good for conservatism. was not a force for good for conservatism. and i think some of these people actually hurt the conservative, there's the old eric hoffer line, it starts off as a movement, turns into a business and ends up as a racket, a lot of that was in conservative journalism so getting rid of some of these people at fox, getting some new blood in, some different perspectives, i think is healthy. i think is healthy. there's also potentially a negative side. i think the rise of breitbart and the fact that they have all this access to a president of the united states is not necessarily a great thing. - can you explain breitbart to an audience

that may not be as acquainted as we are that may not be as acquainted as we are with what they do and who they are? in short hand? - yeah, so i mean they started off being a project of andrew breitbart, whic i mean, he was also a controversial figure. - he was a conservative bomb-thrower. - yeah, but he was a real conservative, he was a good guy, i actually have a picture of he and i together here in austin and a red state gathering. we went with governor perry back, many years ago, right before he died. (audience laughs) - andrew died. - before andrew breitbart, before andrew breitbart died. i'm sorry, governor perry is happily alive and well. wearing very cool glasses as we speak. no, but andrew breitbart was a good guy, he was certainly a bomb-thrower but since andrew breitbart died, breitbart.com was taken over by steve bannon and that's wheit became populist, nationalist, angry, it would go after people like marco rubio and paul ryan, they did something, people forget about this

but they did something that was really sort of horrific to marco rubio. during the immigration reform bill that rubio was championing, there was a provision in there that, was championing, there was a provision in there that, well i'll put it to you this way. breitbart put out a story saying that, they called them marco phones and the story was that marco rubio wanted to give illegal immigrants free cell phones. and you know the old line, a lie is halfway around the world before the truth gets its pants on, it took people awhile to figure out what are they talking about? there was a provision in the bill that if you were a rancher or something and you lived in a remote part of texas, let's say, and you couldn't get cell service, the government would give you a satellite phone so you could report illegal crossings. - and that then became marco rubio wants to do free giveaways to illegal immigrants. - marco phone, which is a complete lie and fabrication. - so you consider breitbart to be a news organization? - well, jeez, that's like defining if trump's a republican

or a conservative, it's in the eye of the beholder. i would say. - well apparently in the eye of the white house it is because breitbart gets into the white house press room. - i do not consider them a legitimate news organization but the white house does. - yeah. and so, and they get to say. - they get to say. - right, that's how that goes. is it better or worse for conservative media to have somebody who you hope is or actually is a conservative in the white house because i sometimes think that the partisan in big air quotes media are better off when they're in opposition mode as opposed to having to deal with their own in office. the nation magazine is never better than when a conservative is in the white house, national review is never better than when a democrat is in the white house or a liberal is in the white house. what do you think about that? - yeah, and also, it's good for money too. i mean, not only does being in opposition give you energy but it also gives you money. - it's a great fundraising. - yeah, if you're a conservative organization, and some of these outlets like national review, i think is now completely a nonprofit and so conservative

donors are more interested in funding center-right journalism when there's a liberal democrat in office. for conservative media. - yeah. well i think that this is actually a very important time. one of the good things that happened for conservatives and one of the reasons that i think you saw so many prominent people take this never-trump position, i think quite honorably and admirably, people like erick erickson is somebody that if you had told me five years ago that erick erickson who was then at red state would be kind of a leading conservative thought leader in opposition to donald trump, i would have said, no way, that's gonna be someone else. or ben shapiro who used to be at breitbart and quit sort of in protest, that he would be a never-trump, a protest guy, so this has been a defining moment a protest guy, so this has been a defining moment and i think one of the good things that happened to conservatives is those of us who were old enough to remember the bush years, conservative media went along

with george bush for way too long and when he did things that weren't conservative like spending a lot of money. regardless of how you feel about the war in iraq, he was sort of a big govnment republican for a lot of time but conservatives were afraid of karl rove and they wanted to support a republican president so they kinda pulled their punches and then harriet miers kinda came along and katrina and these other disasters, that's when they eventually started to turn on bush and i think some of us were chastened by that experience and vowed never to let it happen again. - got it. i'm told we're out of time, but this is fun to have this conversation, matt, and to get your perspective on all this stuff and congratulations on your success, i look forward to seeing you on tv and elsewhere. my pleasure. - matt lewis, thanks very much. (audience applauds) - [announcer] we'd love to have you join us at the studio. visit our website at klru.org/overheard to find invitations to interviews, q&as with our audience and guests and an archive of past episodes.

- if you're a conservative, there's the, is trump gonna be a liberal or a conservative? and that's a real battle taking place 'cause frankly, we don't know what he is, we don't know, he's been all over the map, and then there's the other game, the other sort of paradigm or whatever which is, is he gonna be normal or is he gonna be crazy? which is, is he gonna be normal or is he gonna be crazy? - [announcer] funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation and hillco partners, a texas government affairs consultancy and by klru's producers circle, ensuring local programming that reflects the character and interests of the greater austin, texas, community. of the greater austin, texas, community.