American Dharma (2018) - full transcript

First time I saw it was
at Harvard Business School.

It just blew me away.

When he goes out to that runway

and then you see
the bombers coming in.

I think it's got a lot
of good life lessons in it.

It sets up very clearly this
kind of two types of leadership.

One being the touchy-feely guy

and Gregory Peck,
who is clearly a hard-ass.

But he's not a hard-ass.

Smoke, Ernie?

Thank you, sir.



Think about the scene where
he's coming to take command.

The staff car pulls up
to the gate,

and he's riding shotgun
with the driver.

And I think he even calls him
by his first name.

He gets out,
he smokes a cigarette,

he gives a cigarette
to the sergeant,

then he throws
the cigarette away,

gets in the back seat
of the staff car,

and he's a general.

All right, Sergeant.

He understands his dharma.

He understands
what he has to do.

He understands that for
the betterment of those guys,

for them to fulfill their task,
he has to do it.



Attention!

Dharma is the combination
of duty, fate, and destiny.

For me to fulfill my dharma,
I have to fulfill my duty.

Rest.

I've been sent down here

to take over what has come to
be known as "a hard-luck group."

Well, I don't believe
in hard luck.

So we're going to find out
what the trouble is.

We're going back
to fundamentals.

And I can tell you now,
one reason

I think you've
been having hard luck--

I saw it in your faces
last night.

I can see it there now.

You've been looking
at a lot of air lately.

You think you ought
to have a rest.

In short,
you're sorry for yourselves.

Now I don't have
a lot of patience with this,

"What are we
fighting for?" stuff.

We're in a war,
a shooting war.

We've got to fight.

And some of us have got to die.

I'm not trying to tell you
not to be afraid.

Fear is normal.

But stop worrying about it--
and about yourselves.

Stop making plans.
Forget about going home.

Consider yourselves
already dead.

Attention!

I think it's
a very simple film

with a very simple
powerful message that...

modernity is based
around emotionalism,

what you think is
helping everybody,

but in fact is not allowing
them to fulfill their destiny,

to fulfill their fate.

Even though that fate
and that destiny

may be their own
personal destruction.

A lot of your ideas
are about tearing things down,

war, and destruction.

I believe that you need some
fairly radical restructuring

of this,
and rethinking of this.

The permanent political class
that controls our country

is going to stay
exactly like it is,

until you have true disruption.

It can't be a pillow fight.

You need some killers.

You get some killers,
you're going to see some change

We all know
what the problems are.

"Do you have
the guts to do it?"

Trump had it,
and that's why

he's President
of the United States.

Can I bring up
one last thing?

just Twelve O'Clock High,
one thing I thought of is that

in the motivation of the men

to focus on the mission,
and not themselves,

he was prepared
to not be loved,

in fact to be hated.

If you want to effect change
the important thing is to--

Effect change, yeah.

I used to tell the guys
at Breitbart,

Napoleon's saying
to his Marshals of France,

"When you set out to
take Vienna, take Vienna."

I had gone to Telluride
on and off for years.

I don't even think
I knew at time

that you were going
to have an interview

with McNamara afterwards.

I was just there
to see the film.

I wanted to at least
start to produce these myself,

and start to make films
like this.

Seeing "The Fog of War" at
Telluride was the inspiration.

It's all of you to blame.

Yeah, why not?

If you go back
to Twelve O'Clock High,

to this Quonset hut
where those pilots were,

that's kind of
the populist side.

The working men of America.

But then you see your film
and you understand

the precision daylight bombing
and flying in a fortress

and all that...

was conceived and thought of
by guys like McNamara.

What worked against Germany
and Imperial Japan

clearly was
the exact wrong thing

for how you fight a war
against people

trying to get their independence
and their freedom.

You can see in McNamara

the personification
of globalization.

It's that scientific,
engineering, managerial elite,

that everything's
a set of math to them.

This is all out
of Harvard Business School.

It's all out of
Harvard Business School.

They had this concept, I think
it's become a radical concept,

about the maximization
of shareholder value--

the whole beginning
of the shipping of jobs.

Everything could have
a mathematical base to it,

or have a logical,
or a reason base to it.

I look at The Fog of
Waras a very despairing film,

where McNamara
very near the end, says,

"Rationality will not save us."

I took it a different way.

It's a Greek tragedy, I took it
as hopeful, and here's why:

What's hopeful
about Greek tragedy?

Because you learn
the lessons of it, right?

His rationality can't save us,
didn't save us,

actually buried us into Vietnam
much, much deeper.

What makes us omniscient?

Have we a record of omniscience?

We are the strongest nation
in the world today.

I do not believe
we should ever

apply that economic, political,
or military power unilaterally.

If we had followed
that rule in Vietnam,

we wouldn't have been there.

We were a hardcore
Democratic family.

I went to a Catholic
military prep school.

Vietnam tore
that community apart.

We had a football coach,
Mr. Monaghan.

His boy got killed in Vietnam.

Some of these families,
they never recovered from that.

I'm a paperboy at the time,

and delivering
the papers every day

and you see 200,000 troops
and 250,000 troops,

and 300,000 troops,

and you're a patriot
so you still believe in it,

but you see
the families destroyed.

So I'm at West Point.

My daughter's sophomore year,
it's 2008, I think it is.

It's a tough story to tell.

The West Point girls'
volleyball team

was going to get new uniforms,

and they bring the uniforms in
in boxes off to the side,

and the girls are practicin' in
this huge old dirigible hangar,

where the volleyball team
plays-- from the 1920s.

Looking at this, and looking
at the West Point girls,

and I look over at the boxes.

I just kind of go over
and look at the new uniforms.

They're sealed.

"Made in Vietnam."

"Made in Vietnam."

I lost it.

"Made in Vietnam."

Fifty thousand dead, you know,

a hundred thousand wounded,
families torn apart,

the whole of Southeast Asia,
what,

10, 20, 30
million people murdered?

Right?

What was it all for?

What was Monaghan's kid,
what was that for?

"Made in Vietnam."

With all the jobs
lost to globalization.

It was an incredibly
clarifying moment for me.

In the 20th century,
we decided,

that these individual nation-
states at war with each other

would produce disaster,

and that some solution
had to be contrived.

And when you say we,
what do you mean, "we"?

We didn't decide that at all.

I completely and totally
disagree with that.

-I know you do.
-No, but--

It wasn't the common man
that got us into World War I,

and in World War II,
and in Vietnam,

and all the other wars
that have been fought.

It's Monaghan's son
that's always the recipient
of all the crap.

When you say,
these "nation states,"

it's the elites that
got us into that mess,

and then they came up with some
sort of supranational apparatus

that's gonna take care of it.

No, no, no, no, no.
I disagree 100 percent.

They are the ones
that drove the destruction

of the 20th century.

The reason I'm a populist,

I've gone to
the elite institutions.

I was in the United States Navy
as an officer,

went to
Harvard Business School,

went to Georgetown and got
a Master's in Foreign Affairs,

was in all the board rooms,

went to Hollywood...

and here's the one thing
I can tell you:

If you gave me the choice

between being governed

by the first 100 people
that show up in red ball caps

at a Trump rally...

versus the first hundred guys
that walk into Davos

with their tickets,

I'll take
the working class people,

because they have more humanity
and they understand the world,

and they understand and
have grit and determination,

and they've had to deal...

with all the world
dumps on them.

But what good
does it do to throw

all of the DACA people
out of America?

What good does it do to allow

corporations to pollute
the environment?

Is this populism?

Or is this
something much uglier?

Uglier being what?

Serving big business
and the rich.

It's anti-populism.

That's what bothers me.

That's what makes me
think you're crazy.

And why?

Why? Because I think there's
an inherent contradiction

in the views that you hold?

Do you just want
to destroy everything?

You may hate my guts,

and you may hate
what I stand for,

but if we don't allow
some way for the system

to spread the wealth,

we're going to have
a revolution in this country.

It is coming...

as night follows day.

Do movies provide
an alternative reality,

something that is more powerful
than the real world?

In the Reagan film, I take
a lot of time in talking about

how our idealized version
of America

was done by those
great filmmakers

in the '20s and '30s,
'40s and '50s.

"When the legend becomes more
powerful, print the legend."

Do you think maybe there's a
chance we still might find her?

Injun will chase a thing 'til
he thinks he's chased it enough.

Then he quits.
Same way when he runs.

Seems like he never learns
there's such a thing

as a critter who'll
just keep coming on.

So we'll find them in the end,
I promise you.

We'll find them, just as sure
as the turning of the Earth.

Who do you see yourself as
in these movies?

Gregory Peck? John Wayne?

I've never actually
sat there and go,

"Oh, I'm the Gregory Peck
character."

But clearly in the films
that I love

and I watch
over and over again,

there's a certain type
of individual.

Remember, the John Wayne
character in The Searchers

is kind of an outcast.

It's hard to believe
they're white.

They ain't white... anymore.

They're Comanch...

Where are your casualties?

I'm clearly drawn
to those characters,

and the way
they comport themselves--

also the way
they never give up.

You know, the honey badger
nature of, "just don't quit."

That famous video, he doesn't
care and he doesn't quit.

He's got all these
terrible habits.

He's relentless.
He will not give up.

And I think the thing went out

and had, like,
a hundred million views.

We used to watch it
at Breitbart.

"Honey badger
doesn't give a shit, right?

because he doesn't give a shit.

You just gotta do
what you gotta do.

We didn't care

if we played by the rules,

or particularly against
the Republican establishment

that was so straitlaced
at the time.

When did you realize
that you could

turn it into politics?

Was there an epiphany?

Was it at Breitbart?

2008, the financial crisis
in the fall,

and then President Obama
coming in in January,

and the reaction to that,

the bailouts and
everything like that.

I saw in the Tea Party

really what would become
this populist movement.

It would need a platform
that could get its stories out,

and in Breitbart and Andrew,
you had a real firebrand,

a firebrand who knew culture.

One of his themes
was that culture

is upriver from politics.

Just like in
Twelve O'Clock High,

he'd made it
a central part of our mission.

Anthony Weiner at that time
was as much a cultural figure

as a political figure.

One of the most promising young
politicians in the country.

They were talking about
Anthony Weiner as being

a legitimate candidate for
President of the United States.

We see it in the United States
Senate every single day,

where members say, "We want
amendments. We want debate.

We want amendments,
but we're still a no."

And then we stand up and say,

"Oh, if only we had a different
process, we'd vote yes."

You vote yes if you believe yes.

You vote in favor of something
if you believe

it's the right thing.

If you believe it's
the wrong thing, you vote no.

We are following a procedure.

I will not yield
to the gentleman,

and the gentleman
will observe regular order.

The gentleman will
observe regular order.

I was down in Richmond
with my dad

at eleven o'clock
on a Friday night,

watching the Nightly News,

and we get a phone call,
you know,

can we get on the bridge line?

Right away? There's something
that's happened with Weiner.

He's at home watching
the Washington Capitals game

and he tweets out--

He had thought
he was direct messaging her,

but he had hit
the wrong thing on Twitter,

and put it out
on his entire Twitter feed.

But only up for a nanosecond.

He took it down immediately.

In fact, nobody
ever asked later,

how did we actually
capture that?

Because you just couldn't
possibly capture it...

unless you had somebody,

basically on watch,
and they did.

Some people approached Andrew

that were kind of volunteers
and were following this,

really put him
on 24-hour watch.

Andrew immediately
went out publicly.

It got to be a firestorm, but
Weiner immediately came back

and said, "I'd been hacked."

This would be
the deathblow for the company.

If we had gone out and done this

and actually made it up
or it was not true,

Breitbart's over.

It was I think on
that Monday or Tuesday

that other people
started coming forward.

In fact, someone approached us,
a guy had approached us

with the pictures...

There was a classic
Andrew Breitbart,

drop one, let him respond.

Drop the other,
let him deny it.

We got down to
the fourth picture,

the money shot so to say.

-The dick pic.
-His johnson, right.

He basically called surrender.

Andrew was in the hotel right
next door, complete coincidence.

Weiner's backstage,
I think, or what I heard,

trying to talk his wife into
coming up on stage with him.

Andrew comes in the back.

All the national media
turns to Andrew Breitbart.

They're asking him questions,
the guys have their microphones,

"Hey, we can't hear
your answer. Go up on stage."

And Andrew Breitbart walks up.

I'm here coincidentally,
I just arrived at LaGuardia

because of media requests.

And as I got into my hotel...

I'm Andrew Breitbart,
by the way.

It is news, my friend,
it is news.

And I know of countless other
websites and news organizations

that would put this out there.

If you wrote a script
and pitched that in Hollywood,

they would laugh you
out of the room.

I mean, here you're
watching on national TV

and Andrew Breitbart walks up

to the Anthony Weiner
press conference

with global media there--
and literally takes it over

and has a command performance.

And you would have no way of
knowing where this would lead.

No, if you said at the time
that, in 2016,

in the final two months
that Anthony Weiner,

Huma Abedin,
the Breitbart operation,

the guy that followed Andrew
after he died...

It's like I said,
if you wrote that script,

people would throw you
out of the room.

It would be ridiculous.

I really didn't
know Trump.

He knew me as
the head of Breitbart.

The Mercers just went
to Trump, and said,

"You're going to lose
by 15 or 20 points..

if he kept going down this path.

After I had met with him, I went
to the campaign headquarters

for the first time...

'Cause I'd never been
in a campaign headquarters
in my life!

So I get there at like,
7:00 at night in Trump Tower,

the 14th floor.

And so I expected young
people to be walking around

with polling data,
and all these smart guys

looking at targets of
where we're going to go to.

I'm thinking I'm going
to walk into some Robert Redford

The Candidatemovie.

When I get up there,
it's totally dark.

Nobody there.
It's like, it's 7:00 at night.

And there's one guy. And
I said, "Where is everybody?"

And he goes,
"Well, it's Sunday."

And I go, "Yeah, I got that,
but where are they?"

And he says, "Well, they'll
all be back tomorrow.

They don't really
work weekends."

When I take over he's somewhere
between 12 and 16 points down,

double digits down in most
of the battleground states.

Hillary Clinton's really
not even campaigning anymore,

just raising money.

Then when I'm announced,
it's like the Trump campaign's

so out of business--

This is just Trump
getting vengeance

by getting this mad bomber

who's just going to wreak
vengeance on all his enemies.

-The mad bomber being you.
-Yes.

And it's the exact opposite.
All we did is said,

"Hey, we've got
to be maniacally focused.

Simplify everything."

Make her the spokesman
and the guardian

of a corrupt and
incompetent status quo--

an elite--

and you make Trump
the agent of change

that President Obama wasn't.

We could see his message
was resonating,

and all you had to do was
channel that in the right way.

And yes,
we will build a wall.

Have to.

We have to.

Build that wall!
Build that wall!

Remember, we had a great canary
in the mineshaft. We had Brexit.

Nigel Farage says,

"Brexit would not have happened

if there was not
Breitbart London."

I could see Brexit and 2016

are inextricably linked,
they're inextricably linked.

It's just going to be
three verticals

we're going to focus on.

Number one, we've got to stop
mass illegal immigration

and limit legal immigration
to get our sovereignty back

and protect our workers.

Number two, we have to bring
manufacturing jobs back,

basically from Asia.

And number three, we have
to get out of

these pointless foreign wars.

So, her thing,
when she came out,

was, "Breitbart's racist,
Bannon's a white supremacist."

I walked in,
it was like the fifth day,

I go into the war room
with all these TV sets

and she's in Reno
giving her first speech.

And she's giving a speech
on the alt-right,

and Breitbart and Steve Bannon.

And I'm going,

"She's running for President
of the United States."

I said,
"She's walked into the trap."

This is not conservatism
as we have known it.

This is not republicanism
as we have known it.

These are racist ideas,
race-baiting ideas,

anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant,
anti-women,

all key tenets making up

the emerging racist ideology
known as the alt-right.

A fringe element

that has effectively taken over
the Republican party.

If she's going to preach
identity politics,

and we preach
populism and jobs

and bringing manufacturing
jobs back, we got it.

For all their brilliance
and all their money

and all their professionalism,

they don't have an understanding
of what this election's about,

and that's when I knew
we had her.

Operator, operator.

You have to have
faith in your plan.

That's one of the lessons
of Twelve O'Clock High.

So this is war.

It's absolutely war.

At that level of politics,
it's war.

You're fighting for control

of the greatest
country in the world.

It's war.

War is three phases. Step one,
take the high moral ground,

so you can motivate people
to fight. Number two...

leave a smoking hole
of where your enemy is,

and number three, fill said hole
with your stuff and your values.

We're doing debate prep.

The Washington Post calls
Hope Hicks,

gives her a transcript of some
audio that's going to come out.

I talked to the,
I think the writer's editor,

"Get us the audio
and let us check it,

and we'll get back to you
sometime next week."

And this guy said, "Hey, look,
it's going up in five minutes."

"The authentication process
should be very quick."

As soon as it went up I knew
it was going to be a huge issue.

The Republican establishment,

they were going
to cut Trump loose

to focus on
the House and the Senate.

We were going to do some sort of
video or something that night,

which we didn't get out
until like midnight.

People say it was
the hostage video.

I've never said
I'm a perfect person,

nor pretended to be
someone that I'm not.

I've said and done
things I regret,

and the words released today
on this than a decade-old video

are one of them.

There's a big difference
between the words and actions

of other people.

We will discuss this more
in the coming days.

See you at the debate
on Sunday.

On Saturday,

we had called an all-hands
high command meeting

to be in Trump Tower,
in the penthouse.

We kind of went around.
Christy and Rudy

give a traditional
politician's response:

"Let's call 60 Minutes,

have Melania on one side
and Ivanka on the other,

and you'll be in the middle,
and you'll beg forgiveness."

I was sitting there
just thinking that
if he does that it's over.

I said, "They don't care
about anything in Billy Bush.

What they care about is they're
losing their country

and they're losing
their jobs,

and they're losing
their way of life.

And if they see you
as the instrument

to reverse that,

we're going to win
and we're going to win big.

You have a 100 percent
metaphysical certitude to win.

What we ought to do
is have a rally.

Let's go to the Hilton Hotel

and get a thousand people
red hats,

double down, triple down,
and let's just do it."

This is not Steve Bannon
pushing him.

His natural thing was to fight.

The compromise was that we were
gonna go on ABC and David Muir

and we were going to do
a live interview,

have a middle ground between
sitting on the sofa

and apologizing and having
a rally where he basically said,

"I don't care. I want
to talk about build a wall."

And...

as he got down
to the conference room,

tried to practice, he said,

"I can't do this.
And I'm not going to do this."

Downstairs, there were thousands
of people in the streets.

Many of them anti-Trump.

But there were a lot of
Deplorables down there

in the red caps.

He told the Secret Service right
there in the room, he goes,

"I'm going down
and seeing my people."

He just, he's going to go out
and hold a rally right there.

Donald Trump! Donald Trump!

Are you staying in, Mr. Trump?

-Are you staying in the race?
-100%.

Governor Christie pulled me
aside and we had

a little tête-à-tête.

He blamed me
for being the enabler.

What he had argued
up there was that

this is not about
the campaign.

The campaign's over.

If you go down this path
of what this crazy guy's saying,

you're going to not just
lose this campaign

and lose it by a historic number
but you're going to,

you're going to destroy
your brand.

And it will have
massive impact afterwards.

And so Christie and I got into
it, and I basically told him,

"The plane leaves
at 11:00 tomorrow.

"If you're on the plane,
you're on the team.

You're not on the plane,
you're not on the team."

In that moment,

I had people who would come
as first person testifiers

of the actions of Bill Clinton
and her actions as an enabler,

so I had personal witnesses.

Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey
and others.

At about 4:00 on Friday,

I called up and made sure
that the women

that were being filmed would be
actually in St. Louis on Sunday.

So it was your idea to
bring the women to the debate.

Yeah, 100 percent, yes.

Went up to candidate Trump.
"Here's the plan.

We're going to open the door

and let the pack of jackals
opposition party media come in,

thinking they were seeing
the end of the debate prep,

and these women would
just hit 'em with a fuselage

at one time of,
"Bill Clinton raped me."

And he goes, "I love it."

He took his seat
in the middle.

We open the door
to the media.

They'd walked right
into the traps.

You could tell,
it gave him confidence.

Mr. Trump--

Mr. Trump, you touched a woman
without her consent.

Mr. Trump.

Why'd you say you touch women
without consent, Mr. Trump?

We're talking Bill Clinton now.

Why don't you all go ask
Bill Clinton that?

Go ahead, ask Hillary as well.

The debate before,
they had allowed

Mark Cuban to come down
and sit in his line of sight

to glare at him the entire time.

I said, "Just go get him,
and put him back

"in the seat in darkness.
It's 10 rows back.

It's simple, aisle seat,
10 rows."

No, completely blown off.

So this time,

we're gonna walk out
the four women,

and put them in the VIP seats

and make Bill Clinton,
on national TV, walk past 'em.

And so we just told the guys,
"Hey, we got different VIPs."

And they go, "Oh no, it's
impossible. You can't do that."

"Dude, two weeks ago,
you gave me this speech

about you don't have control
over security."

"What's good for the goose
is good for the gander.

They're going to sit in those
seats, and when he comes by,

they're gonna say
whatever they're gonna say

and you're gonna
live with it."

And it got to be show time.

We've already
rattled them enough.

We did jujutsu, and we turned
the Billy Bush thing around.

It comes down to one or two,

maybe three moments
the entire time,

and you're gonna make a decision
under pressure in the moment

and that decision is either

gonna lead
to victory or defeat.

And if you pick
the wrong path,

you'll look back
in hindsight and see

how your defeat came about.

It wasn't a perfect campaign.

There is no such thing.

But I was on the way to winning

until a combination of
Jim Comey's letter on October 28

and Russian Wikileaks

raised doubts
in the minds of people

who were inclined to vote
for me, but got scared off.

Ask yourself this.

Within an hour or two

of the Hollywood Access tape
being made public,

the Russian theft of John
Podesta's e-mail hit Wikileaks.

The reason why
I believe we lost

were the intervening events
in the last ten days.

This just came out.
This just came out.

Wikileaks! I love Wikileaks.

Hillary had no defense for her
secret speeches to Wall Street,

at international banks

that she hid from the public and
which were exposed by Wikileaks!

The FBI...

has just sent a letter
to Congress...

informing them

that they have discovered
new e-mails

pertaining to
the former Secretary of State,

Hillary Clinton's
investigation.

Lock her up! Lock her up!

Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock!

What's interesting to
me about this whole election,

the moment that her emails
became connected

with Anthony Weiner's dick pics,
she was done for.

And you ran an ad,
it's basically,

I guess you'd call it
from the Roy Cohn playbook.

You call me a pervert, I'm not
a pervert, you're a pervert!

Decades of lies,
cover-ups and scandal

have finally caught up
with Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton is
under FBI investigation again,

after her emails were found on
pervert Anthony Weiner's laptop.

Think about that.

America's most sensitive
secrets, unlawfully sent,

received, and exposed
by Hillary Clinton,

her staff,
and Anthony Weiner?

Hillary cannot lead a nation

while crippled by
a criminal investigation.

Hillary Clinton,
unfit to serve.

The 16 candidates
the Republicans had,

whether you're a libertarian,

whether you're a limited
government conservative,

whether you're
a Heritage guy,

Rand Paul, Chris Christie,
Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio,

all of them combined,

could not have beaten
Hillary Clinton.

It took
a blunt force instrument.

He understands
that the modern world,

particularly the modern
political world,

has become media.

The medium is the message,
and he understands that.

That's why he can speak in
a very plainspoken vernacular,

not in political speak.

He's an armor-piercing shell.

From the first day he came on
the campaign in June of 2015

until today,
the news cycle's Trump.

He has taken over
people's brains.

That he has.

You could not be
politically correct

and defeat the Clinton apparatus
or the Clinton junta.

You need to be
a blunt force instrument.

Do you really think that
she is more corrupt

than say, President Trump?

I don't think Trump's corrupt.
I don't think he's corrupt.

Now he's certainly--
I don't think he's corrupt.

He comes from outside
the government.

He's a real estate guy.

You can be corrupt
outside the government.

Has he been in lawsuits
and had bankruptcies?

That's the real estate
business.

One of the keys to
the campaign was, giving people

permission to vote for him?

Right? At the end, I think there
was up to, like, 15 to 18%,

some huge number,
that had come to the conclusion

they didn't like
either candidate.

That broke, I think, something
like two-thirds to Trump.

These are people that voted that
didn't like either candidate,

but picked
the lesser of two evils,

or the agent of change.

What our job is, as a people,

is to tell the establishment,

the big money interests, the
wealthy campaign contributors,

the Congress, is
the status quo is not working

for working Americans,
and we demand change.

If you had been Bernie
Sanders' campaign director,

would he have won?

He would have definitely
been taking on Donald Trump

as the Democratic nominee,
there's no doubt about that.

Look at the crowds
he was drawing.

It wasn't that
he didn't have the enthusiasm.

Look what he did
with the Millennials.

I can't tell you
how annoyed my son is with me

for voting for Hillary
in the primaries.

My God, you just crushed me.
How did you do that?

How did you possibly
vote for Hillary Clinton?

I'm kind of shocked now.

How could you possibly
make Fog of War,

and how could you make,
what, Known Unknowns,

how could you make this and
then vote for Hillary Clinton?

-Because I was--
-We are...

You're asking me.
It's a question!

We got to swap places now.

Yeah, because I was afraid
of you guys.

I still am.

I thought that
she was the best hope

of defeating Trump.

And Bannon.

I did it out of fear.

I don't know how better
to describe it.

We're at the very
beginning stages

of a very brutal
and bloody conflict,

of which
if the people in this room

and the people in the church
do not bind together

and really for what I feel

is an aspect
of the Church Militant,

to really be able to not
just stand with our beliefs

but to fight for our beliefs

against this new barbarity
that's starting,

that we will literally
eradicate everything

that we've been bequeathed over
the last 2,000 to 2,500 years.

But we are in an outright war

against jihadist Islam,
Islamic fascism.

What I'd like to do is
retrace how you became involved

in all of this,

from I guess the beginnings.

You're a filmmaker.

Then you're the executive
chairman of Breitbart.

Then you're the head
of the Trump campaign,

and then you're
a central advisor

to the President
of the United States.

It's quite a trajectory.

So let's go back to the
beginning. How did this start?

You tell the story
of the current war you're in

by talking about
previous wars.

And I'll use Reagan
as the insurance.

And I'll tell the story

about how we have to confront
radical Islamic terrorism.

I said,
"This is a real enemy.

It's a real enemy
that can inspire,

just like in
Twelve O'Clock High.

And so I made
In the Face of Evilin 2004.

Ronald Reagan was the product

of the Hollywood studio system.

A system that took the story

of the immigrants
and pioneers' efforts

to forge a country
from a vast wilderness,

and turned it
into a heroic struggle.

Order versus chaos,
good versus evil,

translating western
civilizations' legends

into simple stories that
embodied the reluctant hero.

These stories defined
what it meant to be a man,

what it took to be a hero.

That freedom
is a fragile thing.

That evil is powerless
if the good are unafraid.

When the film was shown

at this conservative
Hollywood film festival,

it got like
a 10-minute standing ovation

at the end, and some
huge bear of a guy

comes barreling out of
the audience and embraces me.

He says, "We've got
to take the culture back

and culture's
upriver from politics."

And I said, "Who is this guy?

This guy is like a giant of
a man and full of life.

It was Andrew Breitbart.

For five years
I didn't make a film,

and then I saw
the financial crisis.

I came up with the idea
of telling the story

to Generation Z.

We're going to make
an avant-garde film

for right-wingers.

Now, history teaches

that usually third
turnings finally issue

into a fourth turning.

And a fourth turning
is the crisis.

And history shows
that if an event

doesn't trigger
a fourth turning,

a fourth turning leader
will actually

encourage one to happen.

Or one will simply hit us

because of all the deferred
public decisions

that weren't made during
the recent third turning.

This comes to a head
in the fourth turning.

I wanted to show it
to conservative thought leaders

before we released it,

and so I went to see
Andrew Breitbart.

He had started this blog site
called Breitbart.

He said, "We're really trying
to turn it into a business,

and I know you're
an investment banker..."

And I said,
"Look, if you ever need any help

putting together
a business plan,

or just thinking about
financing, let's talk."

He said, "I'd love to. I'd love
to have somebody do that."

And so he said,
"How about tomorrow?"

And I said, "Sure. Where
are you guys headquartered?"

And he goes,
"In my basement."

And we're sitting
in the main room,

I hadn't seen
a lot of activity.

It was an old blog site.

It was just kind of
a rudimentary site,

that put up,
you know, stories.

We were going
to build an entire new site

that Andrew had thought
through from scratch.

As often happens
in life, we were late.

Andrew had a lot of changes.
We needed 90 more days.

Now, the year before

Andrew had called
in the middle of the night

and he said, "I feel like
I got a Volkswagen on my chest."

He had genetic problems
with his heart,

and he was in for four days
and given

a whole regimen
of things to do.

Of course, Andrew
didn't do any of it.

Ho-ho! CPAC has got to go.
Hey, hey!

Behave yourself!

-You are freaks and animals.
-Chill!

You're freaks and animals!
Behave yourself!

Behave yourself?
Learn to behave yourself first.

Stop raping people!
Stop raping! Stop raping!

Stop raping people!

Stop raping the people!

You freaks! You filthy freaks!

You filthy, filthy, filthy,

raping, murdering freaks!

We had this old warehouse.

He would work every night there
until like 10 or 11 o'clock,

and there was a restaurant
that was open until midnight

and he would go to the bar
and have a quick bite to eat

before going home.

Sat next to a guy
and has dinner,

paid his bill,
shook this guy's hand,

walked outside to get his car

and dropped dead
right on the street

in front of the restaurant.

Dead by the time
he hit the pavement.

Talked to his widow Susie.

She said, "Hey, he's dedicated
his life to this site.

On Sunday night at 8:00, make
sure the curtain comes up."

And that was the beginning
of the weaponized platform

that was the backbone
of the populist media.

You have someone who comes along
once in a generation.

He knew new media.

He had this strong sense
of how people come to the news

in a different way.

And he really had this
extraordinary vision

of what he wanted to do
with Breitbart.

You also had some
deeper understanding

of the Internet.

-Can we talk about IGE?
-Yeah.

In the early 2000s,

Wall Street was already
thinking through

this whole concept
of alternative currencies

coming out of massively
multiplayer video games.

World of Warcraft
was one of them.

Gold is generated, or things
are generated in that game,

and there's a massive
aftermarket for it.

And so investment banks,
sophisticated investment banks

like Goldman Sachs,

were always
on the lookout for

what were
alternative currencies?

We bought like 35 exchanges.

Thirty-five exchanges,
what does that mean?

People need weapons,
they need spells,

so the gold
is an alternative currency.

The aftermarket trading of that
is tens of billions of dollars.

If you went to Kowloon,
if you went to Hong Kong

in the early days,
you'd walk out,

it was a trading floor.

Of the 250 employees,
245 were young men.

They're in games,
generating gold.

I became the interim CEO.

We were generating a tremendous
amount of cash per month

and then all of a sudden

several million accounts
were wiped off

by the game manufacturer.

The game manufacturer
basically, said,

"If you show up with
a social security number

or a country ID to show
that you're a real person,

you get your gold back."

Well, that wipe off was,

let's say in the neighborhood
of 90 million dollars.

This was just not
an alternative currency,

it was a currency currency.

And so Stephen K. Bannon,
you got us into this,

and now help sort it out.

And the one thing
that struck me is...

because I'm not
a video game person,

I've never played
a video game in my life,

never played a video game.

And I said, "Wow,

people spend an awful lot
of time in these video games.

35, 40, 45, 50 hours a week,

people with incomes of 75, 80,
$100,000 with wives and kids."

Now I don't know
that this happened or not,

but there's a guy, Dave,

in the accounts payable
department.

He weighs 250 pounds.

He drops dead of a heart attack
in his cubicle.

He's got a wife and two kids
who don't really know him.

Some preacher from a church

or some guy from the funeral
home that has never met him

does a ten minute eulogy,
says a few prayers,

and they've got one of
these perpetual cemeteries,

and Dave's urn
goes down there.

And that's Dave.

Dave in the game, he's Ajax.

And Ajax is like the man.

When it comes to burying Ajax,

they're going to put him
on a caisson,

and they're going to take it up
for a funeral pyre,

and they're going
to burn the digital Ajax.

There's literally
thousands of people there.

Their rival group,
that hates these guys,

attacks the funeral thing.

People are home
playing the game,

and guys are not going to work

and women are not going to work,
because it's Ajax.

Now who's more real,

Dave, in accounting,
that's in the urn,

his analog self,
or is it Ajax?

People take on
these digital selves

that are a more perfected
version of themselves

and where they
can control things

in a digital way that
they can't in the analog world.

Remember John Ford,

My Darling Clementine?

That's an idealized version
of the American West.

That's what these digital
communities provide to people.

That's what it provided to Ajax
and not Dave.

Singing, "Shall We Gather at the River."

That eventually
became my idea

for the comments section
of Breitbart,

which built
the Breitbart community,

and is not for
the faint of heart.

This became more of a community
than the city they live in,

or the town they live in,
that the old bowling league,

the old Kiwanis Club,
the old softball team

to a large extent
was being replaced by this.

You brought the old
bowling league to Breitbart?

It's like sedimentary rock.

The key to these sites
was the comments section.

This could be weaponized
at some point in time.

The angry voices

properly directed

have latent political power.

Caught the Republican Party
completely unaware

and drove much
of the momentum of Trump

and also added
to the traffic of Breitbart

and to Breitbart's
prominence and power.

He's very superstitious.

There was no concession
speech written,

and there was
no victory speech written.

Wouldn't do it.

I look very much...

forward to being
your President.

And I can only say that
while the campaign is over,

our work on this movement
is now really just beginning.

Remember, at five o'clock
in the evening.

we're told we're going to lose
in a historic landslide.

I think on those exit polls

she wins something
like 400 electoral votes

and the House and the Senate
and the Supreme Court

and life is changed
in perpetuity.

That's eight hours before.

Every newsroom is getting ready
and they're all high-fiving

and Megyn Kelly's
got that big smirk on her face,

like, "Oh, this is going to be
over at eight o'clock."

You know, Miller and Bannon
and the others at 2:30,

we're not sitting there saying,
"Let's have a group hug."

Saying you know

We just did it, and now we're
gonna march on the Capitol.

Throw out all of them,

I mean drop the hammer.
That's how we won.

That's what people voted for.

And it was Donald Trump
that said,

"I think what we ought
to try to tonight

"is bring people together.

Let's de-escalate."

Couple days later,

the resistance is
in the streets.

The signs and people
are so upset about this thing.

He actually said,
"I thought it'd be different.

I thought the New York Times

would be wishing me well
and everything like that."

And I said, "You do
understand they hate you.

They literally detest you.

Everything you ran on,
everything you stand for...

everything you won on.

And the people
that support you they detest.

This is gonna be
trench warfare every day."

And by the way, I'm the enabler
and I take great pride in it,

that just,
"Here's what we ran on,

"here's what we said
we're gonna do.

"Let's just do it.
You're not a politician.

"You're a leader.
Don't act like a politician.

"Just do it.

"Build the wall.

"Eradicate ISIS, right?

"Get manufacturing jobs
back here.

"Confront China.

"Get us out of Afghanistan.

"Get us out of Iraq.

Just do what you said
you're gonna do."

The inaugural address...

"American carnage,"
did you write that?

The President wrote that.

Come on.

It's President Trump's speech.

The only thing I told Miller

is we should have
the podium turned around.

Trump should address it

to all the elites in Washington
D.C. sitting in back of him.

If you look at the inner cities
in this country,

if you look at the industrial
heartland of this country,

there has been carnage.

Globalization has
brought carnage with it.

And it's got to be called that.

The people that are
most offended about that

is the mainstream media
and the globalists.

Bush hated the speech.

He said later, "That
thing's crazy" or something.

He made some really
derogatory comment.

Everyone is listening
to you now.

You came
by the tens of millions,

to become part of
a historic movement,

the likes of which the world
has never seen before.

At the center of this movement

is a crucial conviction

that a nation exists
to serve its citizens.

Americans want great schools
for their children,

safe neighborhoods
for their families,

and good jobs
for themselves.

These are just and reasonable
demands of righteous people.

But for too many
of our citizens,

a different reality exists.

Mothers and children trapped
in poverty in our inner cities.

Rusted-out factories

scattered like tombstones
across the landscape.

An education system
flush with cash,

but which leaves our young
and beautiful students

deprived of all knowledge.

And the crime and the gangs
and the drugs

that have stolen too many lives
and robbed our country

of so much
unrealized potential.

This American carnage
stops right here

and stops right now.

Do you ever see yourself

just hastening the end
of everything?

I don't think
we've hastened enough.

We're either going to make
some fundamental changes

or you're going
to have a revolution.

People say I'm apocalyptic.
I think I'm just a rationalist.

I foresaw someone
like Trump coming along.

People say,
"Oh, this was so unexpected."

No, this wasn't unexpected.
It was clear as daylight.

Can't you be
an apocalyptic rationalist?

I am an apocalyptic
rationalist.

I'm not an apocalyptic
emotionalist. I'm a rationalist.

I'm saying,
if we don't make changes,

we're going
to have an apocalypse.

Let's make some changes.

Do you know what
will happen to me

if the bridge is
not ready in time?

I haven't the foggiest.

I'll have to kill myself.

What would you do
if you were me?

I suppose, if I were you,

I'd have to kill myself.

Cheers.

It gets back to the concept
of dharma, right?

It's his, it's his duty,
his destiny, his fate,

and his obligation,

he thinks, to get
his men through this.

I will create

civilization in the middle
of the horrors of a prison camp

hundreds of miles
from civilization.

Walking on the bridge

on the evening
before it's finished,

he talks about
his life in India,

talks about his life
as an officer,

"What is this all about?"

He's really talking
about dharma,

did I accomplish anything,

did my life have any purpose,
did my life have any meaning?

His swagger stick falls out
of his hand

and falls into the River Kwai,

and he says, "Oh, these are the
thoughts that cloud one's head."

That's why I find the movies
you've picked so interesting.

In many of them,

the hero has
some utter collapse.

In Twelve O'Clock High,

Gregory Peck just...

It breaks him.

-It breaks him.
-Yeah.

This is different.

Alec Guinness,
in his desire to adhere

to the code
of officer conduct,

actually loses sight of why
he's there in the first place.

He realizes that the whole thing
of the properness

and the Britishness
and the what officers did

and everything like that,

it was ultimately to defeat
their enemy, the Japanese,

and that's why he says,
"What have I done?"

What have I done?

And he falls,

and it's his body that
hits the detonator

and blows the bridge up.

Could you imagine yourself
being in a similar position?

I think anybody could.

You have to call into question

and hold yourself
personally accountable,

or you could end up
like Colonel Nicholson.

You could realize,

hey, maybe this
populist-nationalist movement

is more destructive
than beneficial.

You have decisions.

General Savage had decisions

and Nicholson has decisions.

In the Judeo-Christian West,

we're made in the image
and likeness of God.

We're fallen.

I was reading about Lucifer
in Milton's Paradise Lost,

and I have to say that
Lucifer, for me,

had certain Bannon-esque
qualities.

He's the interesting character
in Paradise Lost.

"Rather reign in Hell"

"Than serve in Heaven."
Love that line.

I use it all the time.

-You do?
-Oh, yeah, all the time.

There's a lot of truth to that.

I think it was on
the 28th or 29th of December,

President Obama put sanctions
on the Russians,

including this
fairly dramatic

send 35 people
home to Russia,

in reaction to interference
in the 2016 campaign.

I thought it was...

unusual.

So all I said was,

"Let's have Trump see
exactly what Obama saw,

and let him be briefed
by the same people,

in the exact same presentation.

No more, and no less."

You're the one who asked for it?

I demanded it.

You see, to be fair
to Donald Trump,

let's talk about
the establishment.

Leave how fucked up
all these guys think he is.

He's going to be President
of the United States,

whether you like it or not.

And you have a responsibility
to this country

and to its people to make sure

that it's a smooth transition.

What was agreed to,
there would be a presentation.

I got DNI here, I got CIA here,
I got NSA here,

I got my official staff, right?

That's a good effect.

I said, "Come on down.
Let's see that presentation."

-The way I read it--
-Hang on, hang on, hang on,

hang on, hang on, hang on.
Now you've got me worked up.

Now, turns out that Comey,
the head of the FBI,

had a sidebar package,

It kind of felt like
either a raw file

or what's in the very early
stages of a field report.

And that's what
I get upset about.

How come it's not an appendix
in the presentation?

You know why it's
not an appendix?

Because they were all set
to leak this to the media.

And surprise, surprise.

What was it,
24, 48 hours later,

Buzzfeed launched it and then
everybody did a story

about the story, which is
the easy way out, the cheat.

Remember, I ran Breitbart.

I know the game.

A site like Buzzfeed
got a little looser standards

than the paper of record.
So they put it up,

and then the New York Times
does a story about the story

and links to the whole thing,
and then it's a global story.

Is that the way
the establishment
is supposed to roll?

Is that the game
you want to play?

You want to play that game?

You don't think our institutions
are rotten at its core?

Comey said that when Trump was
apprised of the Steele dossier,

he was just interested
in damage control.

Right. I think why it's unfair
for Comey to say that,

you're presenting a guy
that he's paying prostitutes

in a foreign capital to do
these kind of perverse sex acts,

so I don't know.

I was speaking to him
and briefing him

about some salacious
and unverified material.

It was in the context of that,

that he had a strong
and defensive reaction

about that not being true.

And my reading of it was,

it was important for me
to assure him

we were not personally
investigating him.

I was very, very much
about being in kind of a

kind of a J. Edgar Hoover-type
situation.

I didn't want him thinking
that I was briefing him on this,

to sort of hang it
over him in some way.

I was briefing him on it because
we had been told by the media

it was about to launch.

And what about the weirdness
of Trump

saying why he fired Comey

was because of Comey's handling
of Hillary's emails,

and then backtracking.

I wouldn't even
call it backtracking,

because backtracking
indicates that you know

that you're backtracking,

and then just saying,

"Now I'm going to fire him

because he's getting obsessed
with Russia."

Did you ask for
a recommendation?

What I did is,
I was going to fire Comey.

My decision.
It was not--

You had made the decision
before they came in the room?

I was going to fire Comey.

There's no good time to do it,
by the way.

-They--
-Because in your letter
you said,

"I accepted
their recommendation."

-Yeah, well they also--
-You had already made
the decision.

I was going to fire
regardless of recommendation.

When I decided to just do it,
I said to myself,

I said, "You know,

this Russia thing with Trump
and Russia is a made-up story.

It's an excuse by the Democrats
for having lost an election.

In the White House,
I'm another schmendrick.

I'm just an advisor.

I'm just another voice
around the table.

I would give the President
my opinion with the bark on.

I said, "Director Comey
should stay.

Finish out his investigation."

Just from a practical point
of view, I saw it decelerating.

I mean, you could tell
the reporters were tired of it.

There was no more squeeze
in the lemon.

It just didn't have the juice.

Firing Comey doesn't mean
the investigation's gonna stop.

The FBI's got an investigation.

And I said, "If you fire him
two things are going to happen,

as night follows day."

Within a week,

they're going
to name a special counsel.

And the special counsel's gonna
have a writ

that's going to be so broad--

You're just not going to fire
the head of the FBI

doing an investigation,

and they're just going to sit
there and go, "OK, that's fine."

The institution of the FBI
is gonna bleed you out...

because they have to.

It calls into question...

the institutions in this country
and the establishment.

There has been,
from the beginning,

a nullification project
on the 2016 election.

And if they can't nullify it,
at least question his legitimacy

so much that he can't govern.

People say, "That's the deep
state, it's deep state."

It's not the deep state.
That's the in-your-face state.

It's not a deep state.

It's sitting right there
on the surface.

Bannon was CEO
of the Trump campaign.

Now is seen as
one of the most powerful people
in the White House.

The force behind many of
Trump's early moves, a member of
the National Security Council.

To be clear, this has
never been done before.

One of the most
mysterious players

in the President's
inner circle.

The puppet
master behind President Trump.

A reputation as an influential,

behind-the-scenes string-puller.

This executive
order has made Bannon

much more of
a target in Washington.

His controversial
views on Islam.

Stirring racial hatred
in the United States.

Doubling down
on increasing people's fear
and hatred.

He's a stone-cold racist.

And his extreme political agenda
remains deeply troubling.

The most powerful person
in the White House right now,

including the President.

Were you the principal author
of the travel ban?

Stephen Miller
was one of the chief architects

of many of
the initial executive orders.

I thought the extreme
vetting executive order,

which you call the travel ban,

it's a very pragmatic thing
about extreme vetting.

Look, it bothered me,

because I felt
that it was inherently racist.

And this is
"The Protection of the Nation

from Foreign Terrorist Entry
into the United States."

We all know what that means.

I think the media
completely overplayed that.

Donald J. Trump is calling for
a total and complete shutdown

of Muslims entering
the United States,

until our country's
representatives

can figure out what
the hell is going on!

We have no choice.

We have no choice.

We did want to hit
on day one

and just start to really flood
the zone with executive orders.

It now is the hour of action.

The media can only handle,
like, one thing at the time.

If you've given them
five things a day,

right, three of them
you can kind of get through.

The idea is they
go into sensory overload?

Exactly. They do.

But you had the chaos
at the airports.

People who have a legitimate
purpose in this country

being excluded.

There's a certain kind
of meanness and racism

at the heart of this.

You think it's racist?

I believe that this whole thing
about walls and immigration

isn't really about
economic populism.

I think it is about racism.

Do people really think
that this border wall

is going to suddenly provide
jobs for them?

No, I think
they don't like Mexicans

or they don't like Arabs

or they don't like Jews.

Well, let's go to
a distasteful subject,

Charlottesville.

It was a weekend
of street battles

and stark displays
of racism,

exploding into a deadly act
of domestic terror...

Hundreds of white nationalists
from across the country

descended upon the University
of Virginia's campus,

ahead of a planned demonstration

to protest the removal
of the statue

of Confederate General
Robert E. Lee.

You will not replace us.

You will not replace us!

Jews will not replace us!

You will not replace us!

Jews will not replace us!

Jews will not
replace us!

Jews will not replace us!

Jews will not
replace us!

Jews will not replace us!

Look, reasonable people

can disagree
about the Confederate monuments.

The original protests of,
I think we ought to put shrouds

on the statues of General Lee
or General Jackson

or remove them,
versus people that say,

"No, this is part of southern
heritage and southern culture.

It's not racist,
and they should be honored."

And guess what, there are decent
on both sides of that argument.

White lives matter!
White lives matter!

White lives matter!

White lives matter!

White lives matter!
White lives matter!

Get them off of us!
Get them off of John!

They're beating the fuck
out of us! Get them off!

You go down to the next guys,
these neo-Nazis or whatever.

Those guys,
they have no standing,

OK, and when they show up
they should be shut down.

They're bad guys, OK,

and they're a creation
of the opposition party media.

They're meaningless
in this Trump movement.

They're meaningless
in the populist movement.

They're totally,
completely meaningless.

Go, go, go, go.

Did you guys just see that?
A car just plowed through

hundreds of people,
downtown Charlottesville.

Holy...

We need the ambulances.

It's not conservative media
that's giving them a platform.

It's the left media.
It's MSNBC

and Huffington Post,
you've got the left--

There is something
incredibly perverse

about saying that neo-Nazis

are a creation of
the mainstream media.

No, because they're a creation
of how big and important

and how...
a place they have.

They don't have any place.

At Breitbart News, Steve Bannon
provided a platform

for alt-right groups

who have links
to white supremacists.

A man who proudly promoted
right-wing nationalism

inside the White House
and beyond.

Can you tell us
how you're feeling

about your chief strategist
Mr. Bannon?

I never spoke to
Mr. Bannon about it.

Can you tell us broadly what y-
Do you still have confidence?

Well, we'll see.
Look, look.

I like Mr. Bannon.
He's a friend of mine.

But Mr. Bannon came on
very late. You know that.

I went through
17 senators, governors,

and I won all the primaries.

Mr. Bannon came on
very much later than that.

And I like him.
He's a good man.

He is not a racist,
I can tell you that.

He's a good person. He actually
gets a very unfair press

in that regard.

But we'll see what happens
with Mr. Bannon.

God save thee, my sweet boy!

Have you your wits?
Know you what 'tis you say?

My King! My Jove.

I speak to thee, my heart.

I know thee not, old man.
Fall to thy prayers.

How ill white hairs
become a fool and jester.

I have long dreamed
of such a kind of man.

So surfeit-swelled, so old,
and so profane.

But being awaked,
I do despise my dream.

Presume not
that I am the thing I was.

For God doth know,
so shall the world perceive,

that I have turned away
my former self.

So will I those
that kept me company.

When thou dost hear I am
as I have been, approach me,

and thou shalt be
as thou wast,

the tutor and
the feeder of my riots.

'Til then, I banish thee
on pain of death,

as I have done
the rest of my misleaders,

not to come near our person
by ten miles.

Falstaff is the very
human element of Henry V.

He really shows him
what it is to be a full person,

takes him through
the transition to manhood.

He's saying,
"I am now the King of England,

and it's just not
going to work."

I guess the irony is that
the Trump-Bannon relationship?

I could see that
in watching it, you know,

"banished from the kingdom."

Do you think that
Falstaff was betrayed?

Not at all. I think if you go
back to Twelve O'Clock High,

it's his Dharma.

That's his duty.

He is now the King of England.
He's not the young man

who was unformed
when Falstaff met him.

He understands that Falstaff
can have no role in that.

I didn't take it personally.

I think the look on Falstaff's
face at the end

is projecting that Falstaff
understands that too,

that this had to happen.

This is the logical order
of things.

I would never have
interpreted it that way.

-How would you interpret it?
-I saw it as a betrayal.

Why a betrayal?

Because Falstaff
gave him everything.

He did give him everything,

but remember, Sir John Falstaff
knows the entire time

that this guy is going
to be the King of England.

It is almost like
he's training Henry V.

Clearly at the end he thinks
he's going to get,

as he tells his buddy,

"I ran the campaign.

Now I'm gonna be
senior strategist, right?

I got a special deal."

And you're told you're not.

To look at Falstaff at the end,
at least to me,

he understands
that it's not really a betrayal.

It's the natural
order of things.

The film is based upon
the beginnings of the mutiny,

when the French soldiers said,

"We're not going
to do this anymore."

They couldn't take
being treated like animals.

That's the Deplorables
right there.

The officers and the politicians

are all in these chateaus.
They're having balls--

It's the Deplorables
that are in the trenches,

living like rats, with rats.

I'd like to have those guys
in the trenches make decisions.

But that's the problem, it's
the elites making the decisions.

Think of all the bad decisions
that have been made on globalism

by this kind of scientific

engineering-managerial-
financial elite.

Look at where the country is.

Look at where
working class people are.

Look where the middle class is,

particularly from
the financial crisis.

People have been
getting fucked.

It's as obvious
as the nose on your face.

We have a consolidation
of power.

We have a consolidation
of wealth.

You have to tell
the establishment,

"Go fuck yourself."

You just have to.

I call him
the Fuck You President,

because all of those people,

all they've wanted to do
is to say to people,

"Hey, you, go fuck yourself.
Fuck You."

He's the Fuck You President.

You want healthcare?
Fuck you.

You want clean drinking water?
Fuck you!

Please.

What the little guy wants is to
fuck you to the establishment.

I'm on a mission to try to
remake the Republican Party

into more of a workers' party.

And some days we have good days
and more days we have bad days.

It's not easy, because the money
and the power's on their side.

But why channel people's hatred
of the Other?

Your assumption is that
it's something of the Other.

It is not about the other.

Everything that
we've been focused on

is about American citizens.

This is not about the Other.

This is about maximizing
the value of your citizenship.

President Trump's
"economic nationalism"

does not care about your race,
your religion, your ethnicity,

or your gender.

It doesn't care
about your sexual preference.

It cares about one thing.

Are you a citizen
of the United States?

I can tell you one thing
after going all over the world.

History is on our side.

The globalists have
no answers to freedom.

Let them call you racist.

Let them call you xenophobes.

Let them call you nativist.

Wear it as a badge of honor.

When I walk in,

eighty or ninety percent of
the audience spits on the floor.

Because here you have
this racist, nativist,

really bad guy.

If not for him Donald Trump
wouldn't be president.

I hit them with
the exact same punchline,

which I did with Front National
and in Zurich.

You may be better fed,
better clothed,

in better shape
than 18th century Russian serfs,

but you're nothing but serfs.

You're not gonna own anything.

They've got you
in this consumer environment

where you're always
paying off your credit cards.

They've destroyed thrifts,
so you can't save anything.

Saving doesn't make
any difference.

And then digitally
they've taken all your rights,

they've taken
all your personhood,

and they've written these
algorithms that treat you like--

Like a hamster.

You're totally controlled,
absolutely, totally controlled.

I harken back to
Twelve O'Clock High.

You can't fulfill
your destiny.

You can't fulfill your dharma.
You can't do it.

You're nothing but a serf.

You voted for that,

You're a reflective,
smart person.

You actually thought about it
and made a conscious decision.

Why? "Oh, I fear you. I fear
Trump. I fear--" It's bullshit.

Just to clarify, my fear is that
Trump represented nothing.

There's going to be a revolution
in this country.

It's coming.

We can't kick the can down
the road like this. We can't.

We're gonna have another
financial crisis,

that everybody that's
smart sees is coming.

What would revolution mean?

What are we talking about here?

A complete rejection
of the system.

It's gonna cut
like a scythe through grass.

It is coming.