It's great to have back on the program today. Steve Schmidt, renowned American political strategist, commentator, founder of The Warning, a popular newsletter, podcast and YouTube channel. Well, Steve, I don't know where to start. I mean, I think one place is one of the reactions I'm now seeing from some on the Trump supporting right is to say that a
lot of our worst fears are kind of hyperbolic. And often they will say, you know, the first term didn't actually see all of the things we worried would happen, and therefore this term won't either. You put out videos before the election, including Steve Schmidt explains why Donald Trump will become the next Hitler if he wins, Trump will be the end of America. Talk to us. Is there a hyperbolic or sensational element to that or are those your literal beliefs.
What I said in the immediate aftermath of the election is that I stay and boy, everything that I have said about Donald Trump over nine years, I am right about who he is. Donald Trump campaigned as a fascist, and campaign was repugnant, race bating, dishonorable, and here's reality, seventy four million of us voted against it. We said no,
we have representation in this country. We have rights in this country, including the right to oppose, the right to assert conscience, to dissent, and to say no. Couple more million people voted for Donald Trump, and we can talk about that now. What I did say is I'm going to be very clear and precise with regard to my use of language. Until he governed as a fascist, I will not say that Donald Trump is governing as a fascist.
Campaigning as a fascist is different than governing as a fascist, right, But there are no people that I'm aware of that have campaigned as a fascist who have not governed as a fascist. And when I look at the insanity and the desecrative nature of his early nominations, they suggest to me tremendous extremism aimed at annihilation of these agencies is functional for the purposes of creating chaos in order to assert the need for more power to end the chaos.
He has said that he will deploy the military as part of his mass deportation operation, of which we have no details except for that some of the parameters call for the construction of quote massive detention facilities. So what words are we to use to call those what euphemism are we going to settle on? So, yes, this is
a dangerous time. And I don't think that you compare Donald Trump to Adolph Hitler loosely, And I absolutely don't think if you do it, you go sit down and have tea with him at Burchase guarden Ecmi Mara a Lago.
As far as what now happens both to anti Trump Republicans but also what I call the demoralized and despondent left, many of whom I'm hearing from regularly, who say, I start gagging when you tell me about let's look at twenty twenty six. It's just I just can't now go. We're gonna get them, and let's start figuring out and let's talk about who'll run in twenty eight. It's just a huge swath of my audience is like, no, no, no, no,
this was so devastating. I'm out for a while. What now for those groups of people you.
Can't get out? Okay, you don't have to charge. You can just sit and do less and read and comprehend and orient towards what's happening and get ready to oppose it. Right, And what I would ask is if any one of your great many listeners are fans of politicians. Let that go, right, don't trust any of them, be skeptical of power. Understand who your allies are, and hold them to account. Now, a's some bad news about twenty twenty six, right, Chuck
Schumer is a disaster, the communications disaster. John Stewart making fun of him the Last Night brutal. He's a strategic disaster and a tech tactical disaster. Because Democrats have no shot really to pick up any seats in twenty twenty six in the Senate. Right, so there's no chance. A less society crators, and there's a turnout that's so violatile that it changes the composition of the electorate in red states profoundly and historically so absent that the only races
of consequence of matter. In a federal election of the House, Democrats have to get the power of the perspect They have to take back the House. And the good news is there are only three elections in the last one hundred and twenty four years where the incumbent president's party has picked up seats in the first mid term election, and the bottom line is Trump won by three million voters and a lot of people aren't going to like a lot of the things that he is going to do.
We are nothing if not a fickle people. So to all the despondent folks out there, George W. Bush's approval level was a solid seventy seven percent on the day of the Iraq War began. Give it six months now. You have a right to be angry about being lied to by a small circle of staffers around Biden about his competency and capacity. You got a right to be angry about corporate media and Joe Scarborough and the constant
bullshitary and the access media. And you got a right to be mad as hell about the democratic politicians who won't fight, who can't see it coming, who will accommodate what needs confrontation, and who will normalize what is deeply, deeply wrong. And so there will be leaders who emerge.
When they emerge, get behind them and understand it. We need to build a broad coalition of the americanism that tolerates dissent, that accommodates everybody that believes an opportunity for everybody that rejects these dogmas of collective guilt, that rejects extremism. It makes clear that the purpose of politics is to make the lives of ordinary people better. So I've had a reading assignment. I'd say go read five or six John Kennedy campaign speeches, pick them at your leisure, and
go read FDRs nineteen forty inaugural. There's going to be a moment soon where people are gonna need to be on the streets protesting. I've never marched in a protest in my life. I suspect we'll be in my first one. Because when the military deploys and Trump rolls through the US Senate and acts with impunity and immunity, we will be in deep crisis. And Americans have an absolute right, a god given one in fact, to stand, to oppose, to defy, and to say no, rest up, it's coming.
I'm Steve Schmidt. This is the warning, and I invite you to join. Subscribe on our substack, on our YouTube channel, follow us. Welcome to the community.