American Dharma (2018) Movie Script

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."

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!

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.

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 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!

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.

American Dharma (2018) - full transcript