Hello, politicon, how are we doing . applause it is great to be back at politicon in nashville, tennessee, how many folks here are from nashville . Wow. How many folks are from outside of nashville . noise how many people here are from outside of the country . Weve got a few in the back. Nice. Well, my name is steven, im the founder and president of the millennial action project, were a national Nonpartisan Organization working with young elected officials to bridge the political divides in our country and to enact systemic reforms to make our democracy function better. Today, weve got an amazing discussion lined up for all of you with two of the leading political commentators in our country, so lets bring them out. First of all, we have writer, commentator and author of 13 New York Times best sellers sellers, ann coulter, give her a round of applause. applause do i go there . Right in the middle. Thank you. And another writer and commentator and writer at the atlantic, give a big round of applause for david fromm. applause all right. How are we feeling . Great, so good to be here. Excellent. Well, i commented that both of you are authors and david in the past, youve actually commented about anns book on immigration, that it was perhaps one of the most politically influential books in our country around the issue of immigration. So let me start with you, david. Why did you make that comment . Well, i said it was the most directly politically influential because ann had written this book about immigration that donald trump had read. Donald trump at that point was known for really one point of view, which is his advocacy of trade protectionism. That had been the signature issue since the80s. I think he found anns book and found his idea and that was the idea that he rode to overcome the republican field. What had happened in the aftermath of the Great Recession was that Republican Voters had decided what we want is more healthcare, less immigration, and no more bushes. And the republican establishment said right, got it, more immigration, less healthcare, and one more bush. And so it was a rotten floorboard and ann showed donald trump the way to pierce it, from my point of view, tragic consequences for the country, but great consequences for ann because she became really a kingmaker. And were going to dig into that. One of the main topics well touch on today is immigration and in terms of format this is just going to be an informal conversation. Now, both of you leading into the trump years and during the trump years have been immigration hawks, but since trump has been elected, you have converged on your views on the administrations views on policies, one of those big differences is on the wall itself. Ill start with you ann. First of all, what did it feel like to have the soon to be president reading your book, agreeing with a lot of your views and why do you think he has agreed with you on a lot of these topics . The strange thing is why no other republicans would just pick up this obviously popular issue. Americans, every time immigration has been put to a vote, i mean, going back to the70s, americans have voted for less Legal Immigration and a complete stop to ilLegal Immigration and its just like brexit, except weve been putting up with it since the70s. Its been decade after decade after decade. I completely agree with what david just said. This is what the Republican Party would not deliver. Now, when they run for office, oh, they promised to get tough on immigration. In many famous instances, one of the most egregious that i think was one of the many incidents that led to donald trump was in 2014, obamas president , republicans are a minority. How did republicans take a majority in the senate in 2014 . Well, that was when obama was threatening to issue his executive order on dreamers, which he had spent the previous four years telling immigration activist groups i cant do that, that would be unconstitutional. So the constitutional law professor himself said what he was doing by executive order was unconstitutional. Mitch mcconnell, the Republican Senatorial committee, lamar alexander, all of them go out and say vote for us and we will we have a lot of ways to block obamas executive amnesty. We go out, we vote for them, and did they follow through . No, they did not. They did absolutely nothing. And to this day, i mean, trump has done nothing either, but americans have been betrayed, betrayed, betrayed. It is weird that trump is the only one to say hey, i know, ill run on a popular issue. laughs lets go to david, you obviously disagree with what a lot of what the Trump Administration has been doing. One of those big things you disagree with is the wall. So first tell us why you think generally hes read the issue wrongly and why you think the wall is incorrect. For me, thats not one of my big problems with the Trump Administration. The wall is obviously a foolish idea. The airplane has been invented. But my dissent goes deeper. I mean, i see donald trump as hes a con man, hes a criminal, hes beholden to foreign interests, he shouldnt be president. My vision about why immigration was such an important issue was that if we are going to cope with what globalization has done to advance societies and not succumb to people like donald trump, not vote for things like brexit, you have to build a society with a stronger sense of national identity. Thicker bonds between citizens. So that means more social provision, its going to mean Something Like a National Health insurance program, something ive been an advocate of for now, a while. And you can only do that if people have an idea were not underwriting this for the planet or for whoever shows up, that the claim that were making upon each other is precisely a claim as citizens and that has to be by the way its very important that they be racially and ethnically neutral because americans will not vote for this as the matter of the supremacy of one group it another. And i watch with horror what donald trump everything he touches, he discredits. And his by the fact that he took up this issue and associated it with himself, that we now have made it more difficult to come up with a responsible approach to immigration. Immigration numbers actually went up during the trump years, especially in the first half of 2019, and we are going to make it more difficult therefore, to solve all the other problems that need to be solved if societies are to be saved from the kind of selfharm that so many societies are doing to themselves. Lets dig a little bit, can i respond to that, i think thats a beautiful point and it shouldnt be lost, your citizen point, that were part of a family, its the American Family and there have been studies on this that people are less inclined to vote for, you know, all kinds of social programs when they dont feel a connection, when theres diversity, its supposed to be such a wonderful thing. In fact, studies and the authors like the Robert Putnam study out of harvard, he was the bowling alone guy, he did study after study, people feel less cohesiveness the more diverse their town is, their community is, they participate less, theyre not interested in civic values. So i dont want davids point on the importance of feeling like were a family together, not exactly like your own family, you feel a little closer to your family, your neighbors, we are all americans. I think thats a great point. As for and that was exactly what i was worried about when trump came down the escalator, his second point, that trump has now discredited important ideas. I think thats not true. But that was absolutely the fear, which is why, even though two days after he came down the escalator with the mexican rapist speech as i fondly refer to it, i did go on with bill maher and said i think he would be the nominee, because at least he was talking about it, not in the terms i would have put it. He was talking about an issue that no other republican would raise. Sometimes, democrats would raise it, but not follow through so for a couple of weeks i wasnt for trump. For one thing i was expecting him to back away, but for another thing, i mean, i was rather concerned, is he going to raise this issue, hell lose because, you know, hes a coarse vulgarian, but they will claim he lost because of the issues. No, because he won, i will tell you the world has changed in a big way. I dont want him to hear this because im going to keep trolling him and attacking him until he fulfills his promises to the voters, but even if he doesnt fulfill his promises to the voters, which is an outrageous betrayal and should not be forgiven, even if he does not, the world has changed in a way that is im very sensitive to, i think if i say it, youll be sensitive to because back in the 2000s when mccain was pushing amnesty and bush was pushing amnesty, and then mccain comes or rubio runs for senate in florida, promising on his mothers life that he would not come out for amnesty, gets to the senate and whats the first thing he does . I got an amnesty bill. So after being betrayed, betrayed, betrayed, it could he could have queered the deal. It would have been blamed on him pushing popular issues. Back then in the 2000s, i could count on one hand the number of people in the conservative media. Who were with the voters on immigations. Most of the talk radio hosts, most of the conservative names and for the conservatives out there in the audience, names you would know that im not going to mention. They were absolutely, 100 for amnesty. There were dark days. We thought it was over, we had nobody on our side. That has changed, 180 degrees. Now, i drive around listening to talk radio, and radio hosts who not only never talked about immigration, but if they did, they were completely against or for amnesty, and for you know, we have to do this, we have to do that, how are we going to get the hispanic vote, now theyre practically reading from adios america, point after point after point. Look at how fox news has flipped. I mean that little episode i was just describing where republicans get us to vote for them in 2014, we vote for them because they promised to block obamas executive amnesty, they betray us. Mickey wrote an article, just recording what was on fox news primetime, every night, as democrats were filibustering the bill. Nothing about amnesty, fox was not alerting the troops, they wanted amnesty. Youll also recall probably because of immigration, rupert murddoch wanted to stop trump. It famously leaked before the first fox news debate that recuperate murdoch had called over and said this has gone on long enough. That was supposed to shut trump down and instead poll after poll after poll he won. Why . Because of immigration. applause but the story of the trump years is the story of the party that wins more and more of less and less. Its true that fox news and talk radio have consolidated behind the trump approach, but they are an ever dwindling part of america. The way this kind of change, a reknitting of the civic compact, strengthening bonds between citizens would ever happen, the way you would get social permission, the National Civic permission to enforce the law and to taper off the flow of numbers to a more sustainable level, which is not zero, by the way. Immigration is not a binary issue, its a matter of more or less and who and what kind and in what order the way you get that is with a law that is going to as daniel said about healthcare will pass the senate 7030 or it wont pass at all. The trump method, which is about selfseeking always, is about polarizing, because the only way he can mobilize people behind him is to make them so angry at their opponents that they dont look at him. And thats going on right now with this impeachment process. So where i think were going to end up, because of trump, is were going to end up with some executive action on immigration of a kind that has been so brutal as to radicalize in the opposite way people who might have potentially supported a humane approach, numbers have flowed now through the asylum seeking system rather than through the regular immigration system. And any kind of hope for a Cross Party Consensus has been broken. Republicans are radicalized behind their positions, democrats have been radicalized even more. The kinds of things if you quote things that barack obama said in his second book about immigration, people dont mention who the author was. People will be shocked because of where the Democratic Party was in 2007 on the immigration issue and where it is now. And thats something to do with the internal work of the Democratic Party, but its something to do with donald trump. We cant solve any problem, unless we have a strong sense of national cohesion, of not only solidarity, but sympathy, of respect for each other. We cant solve anything because of the its not a parliamentary system, things have to go through the house and the senate, they have to be enforced by the states, the agencies have to have buyin. You have to build a real consensus and if you have a governing approach that is about inflammation and rage and locking people ever deeper into their respective silos, so that they never so they trust their leaders no matter how defective those leaders are, nothing will be done and nothing has been done in the trump years on this issue or any other. It really is remarkable how thin the trump record is and it is thin, at least any public spirited act, hes done a lot of graft, but on the things that a president might want to do, he has gotten very little because he has not got the mechanism of leading the nation. Donald trump can never go on tv and speak to america because he doesnt know that place. He only knows his america and his america is becoming more isolated, and its becoming more a minority. applause i would disagree with that to the i think i dont disagree with your description of what has happened, but i think youre kind of blaming the victim. When everything trump does, even his reasonable things, even when he speaks well, ive never seen, its like a collective psychosis how liberals lose their minds. applause take something that i think and just, you know, hear me out, i think its a perfectly reasonable policy and it was upheld by the Supreme Court, a little spoiler alert there, but what was called the muslim ban. We are not required to take everyone from every country on earth. After the charlie hebdo, the concert massacre in paris, after san bernardino, after the pulse night club, i really im hardpressed to find a problem with trumps speech saying we need to take a pause in countries where terrorists that are on the state department terrorist watch list from muslim countries until we as he said can figure out what the hell is going on. I mean that seems eminently reasonable to me and instantly, i mean, for a week, all i saw on tv was, hes hitler, hes hitler, hes hitler. Then they enact it, New York Times for the First Time Ever published a Grove City College writer, explaining on the op ed page, it was called the travel ban, was unconstitutional, you cant do this, yeah upheld by the Supreme Court. Same thing with his wall funding. I mean, over and over again, he takes reasonable steps. The fact that he has hell and and has a very limited vocabulary really isnt a problem compared to republican after republican after republican lying to the voters, getting us to vote for them, and then betraying us. How do you have a democracy . Were watching it, feeling sorry for the british. What on earth is going on . They voted for brexit 2 years ago. Im telling you, weve been doing this for 40 years and thats why people got fed up and voted for trump and it is it is and if hes watching, youre doing a terrible job, mr. President , youve got to pedal to the metal on those promises, but if he werent donald trump, if his rally cry had not been at every single rally build the wall, if he were jeb, if he were president rubio, which, of course, could never happen, and had done the exact same things, i would think i had died and gone to heaven. So compared to any of the others, hes done stuff, but he hasnt done the stuff he has the Constitutional Authority to do and he could do. applause so what the muslim ban meant in real life was that if an American Family, citizens, who were muslim, wanted to have motherinlaw visit them to spend a few weeks with the grandchildren, she couldnt do that. What it meant was that if you were a company and you had an executive who came from one of the countries the plan originally was that it would apply to people of muslim faith from any country, and then a certain number of countries. If you had an executive or a skilled person that you wanted to rotate them in for a while, you couldnt do it. What you did was you attacked on the basis of a religious test, the commonalities that people had. And you drove people of many people were not especially political, to take a position on something that it never occurred to them their government could ever do. And one of the features of the trump years has been its launched the kind of mobilization of americans against americans in a way that we have never seen before. And heres a data point that drives that home. So 2010 was a big republican year, republicans won the house of representatives and one of the biggest flips in recent congressional history. Total number of votes cast. Look at the total number of votes cast in 2010 for republican candidates and look at the total number of votes cast in 2018. Republicans actually won more votes for the house than in 2018 than they won in 2010. Democrats won 9 million more votes than that. You have and what is going to happen in 2020 is youre going to have an unprecedented republican mobilization, but an even bigger and unprecedented democratic mobilization, everyone is being pulled into the political system by mutual antipathy and when that happens, nothing gets done. The muslim ban, theres no there was never any case for it. It was always a wicked and foolish thing to do, but it was also a deeply unwise thing to do because if the goal is to move to a system where we take more people with skills, fewer people without, we have better enforcement to make sure that people that are in the country have a right to be here, and we get a grip on total numbers and we stop treating the asylum system as a secondary immigration system, if thats the goal, you need a National Consensus behind it as you would need a National Consensus for anything big and when youre dividing people and alienating people and saying, you know, the head of cardiac surgery at this hospital is a lesser american than anybody else, hew do you get anything done . Who wants to live in such a country . applause as you respond to that, weve been talking about the travel ban. And it reminds me that trump has been doing a lot of his immigration policy through executive actions. So im curious how you feel about that and how that squares with i think more traditional conservative philosophy that seeks to rein in the executive branch. Im glad you mentioned that because that is actually a falsity. Sometimes, people get gined up on particular one thing that was wrong. Another one thats similar to it. Theres nothing the matter with an executive order if its within the executives Constitutional Authority. Similarly the left used to claim that what conservatives objected to about Supreme Court rulings was they overruled a congressionally passed law, they cant do that. No, we dont care who passed it. The question is, is it constitutional or not . Similarly with the executive order. We dont care about that theres an executive order and one of the things i wrote about this and in trump we trust that was his campaign was just it was magnificent in so many ways and one of the ways was 99 of the things trump was promising he didnt need congress for. It is 100 within the authority of the executive, and its been done over and over again and i dont think theres anything wicked about the muslim ban. I know a lot of muslims who are very happy to hear it. They had fled these countries because of the terrorism. They wanted to live in a country that wasnt going to have pulse night clubs, they would have people look at them less suspiciously if we cut down on san bernardinos and so on and so forth. You can work out getting the doctors in. But weve done it over and over again. I mean, weve discriminated on the basis of nationality, on race, on religion, not only is it the job of the executive, immigration is an extension, as the Supreme Court has found over and over and over again of foreign policy, which is the province of the executive, but, you know, just to be extra sure, congress wrote a law saying the president may, in the interests of the United States, exclude any category of people. For about 30 years there was a religious discrimination on immigration in favor of jews from russia. We had National Discrimination in favor of vietnamese. And so on and so forth. And after, you know, terrorist attack after terrorist attack, it is kind of striking. I mean, maybe ill be proven wrong this next week, but we havent had any more san bernardinos and one other thing and i cant attack david for this because i know we agree on this, but what you often hear from the left is an argument like yours that, of course, im sympathetic were all sympathetic to yes, we want the muslims who are the cancer researchers. Whenever were arguing about immigration, suddenly we hear about the cancer researchers, and then you look at the numbers and its 90 , you know, landscapers and push cart operators. Exactly what you say yes, its not just numbers. Were the new england patriots. We want to be going around getting the Best High School football players, not just oh, yeah, we had to take him, but i know hes blind and weighs 99 pounds, but its tom bradys cousin, weve got to take him. Thats our immigration policy. Yes, move it to were taking cancer researchers and nobody cares muslim, nonmuslim, vietnamese, country, this that or the other thing, but by the way when trump has tried to do that, when he has tried to say we dont want people to come to our country who immediately need government assistance. What kind of country would do that . How about you dont come here and immediately need government assistance . That seems like a good cutoff. Trump has pushed it just in the last week or two. And once again im hearing claims of hitlerianism. In the First Six Months of 2019, the number of people crossing the southern border reached 100,000 a month. And they arrived and they made an asylum claim. And those asylum claims were pretty clearly unfounded, but nonetheless, there was a system of law and treaty that governs how Asylum Seekers are treated to make it very difficult for the United States to do anything about that. If you want to do something about that problem, youre going to need change too change the law and change some treaties. Immigration is an issue that now impinges immigrant and their children are Something Like now a fifth of the country. And even, though, immigration at very high levels has at its most direct economic harm on the most recent immigrants, people also vote their values. Immigrants too just like everybody else and no one will support you if theyre being insulted. The process of arriving at an Immigration Reform is going to be done in the context of doing other things, too. If you think of Immigration Reform as part of a context of constantly seeking the best Human Capital for the United States, not only from around the world, but here at home, immigration is related to the reasons why we have things like Early Childhood nutrition programs. Its related to why we need to think about moving the beginning of education from first grade and kindergarten earlier and earlier so that people, americans, whether their parents are born here, their parents are immigrants, have the fairist chance and it is connected to reknitting these bonds of solidarity that are expressed through anxieties about their health insurance. To do all of that youre going to need public leadership that can work with others and can speak to the whole country, including those who arrived here yesterday. When donald trump says something about tells a naturalized citizen to go back where you came from, im a naturalized citizen, i know he doesnt mean naturalized citizens who look like me. He means naturalized citizens who look like something else. And no one, no one will stand with you if they feel devalued and disrespected and the essence of Donald Trumps appeal is his ability to project disrespect. Thats what he does. Thats why unfortunately, some people like him, but thats why so many more dont and thats why his administration is going to be so void of accomplishment and when its all over and its going to be over i think pretty soon and in a pretty dramatic way when its all over, all those executive orders are going to be blown away like so much dust because the next president can change them. Enduring change comes from the hard work of Building Political coalitions and donald trump cant do that work and the things he does care about are not going to last, the things he cared about less are not going to last. All thats going to last is the harm, the attack on american alliances and the mutual anger among american citizens. Its going to be a tougher country to govern in the 2020s because of him. A few points on that. First of all, thats why a wall is a great idea. Its forever, its not an executive order. It works, they work all over the world, it works in china, it works in israel, yes, there are airplanes, but its a lot easier to stop people and ask for their papers. I mean, it takes two hours if youre an american citizen arriving at jfk to get through customs as opposed to having a wide open border, but thats part of what has annoyed me about trump acting like, you know, his hands are tied with the asylum laws that do need to be changed. No, of course, nobody wants these families dragging poor little kids dying in the desert, being raped in the desert, being killed, no, we dont want that. Thats why we dont want our country to be a magnet. Thats why. Want to give them free public benefits. Thats why we dont want to have a wide open border. A wall and theyre not going to make that journey. Thats among the fantastic reasons for a wall. As for bringing the country together and his language and the importance of it, i dont disagree with the importance of it, but i just im always reminded of that new yorker cartoon with the greek looking at a man saying i was hoping for a taller honest man. Okay trump isnt everything. But after betrayal, betrayal, betrayal, ill take some coarse language. Point three, i think you are wrong that hispanics and muslims in this country are put off by this. I think white social justice warriors and College Students are put off by it. And my example of that is because oh, my gosh they were hysterical about the mexican rapist speech. I often spend christmas in palm beach, im going around to Christmas Parties, this is 2017 after the mexican rapist speech, after all kinds of wild language used by trump, and people had warned me about this, i saw this going to Christmas Parties in palm beach, someone whose name you all know ill tell you afterwards was walking around, they were all shell shocked in palm beach, but one in particular, he just kept going up to people at parties saying i dont understand. We were all for jeb. But the hispanic help is all for trump. And the reason part of that reason and why i grimaced when i said hispanic, i think hispanic is an invented category used by ethnic grievance groups and republican political consultants. One of my friends asked a dominican he worked with as were having this surge across the border, do you feel a particular affinity with mexicans . And she said to him, hes a german jew. No. Do you . Hispanics dont think of themselves as hispanic. They they think of themselves as mexican, puerto rican, ecuadorian. Its an imaginary category so this idea that all hispanics are upset, that people are entering the country illegally on the border, underselling their jobs, their wages are the ones that are taking a hit from all of this. They dont want their lazy brotherinlaw sleeping on the couch. No, hispanics trump got slightly more of the hispanic vote than either mccain and bush so i dont worry that much about the language and as for dividing the country, yes, its divided, but again, i say, i put the blame on the left. Ive never seen anything like this. applause so the reason the republicans lost the house in 2018 was not because of the left. The republicans lost districts like texas 7, which was represented by george h. W. Bush in 1966. He flipped it from democrat to republican. It stayed republican through water gate, through iran contra, through the iraq war and went democrat in 2018. They lost districts like Newt Gingrichs former district, he turned it from democrat to republican in the middle1970s and it stayed republican that whole time and went in 2018. Eric cantors district, the most affluent part reaching up towards the district of columbia, that has been republican forever and ever. The District South of the potomac river, one of the richest districts in america, its been republican for 60 of the past 66 years. And it went democrat in 2018. All four cases by the way, the winner was a woman. What you are seeing what you are seeing is a turn away from the Republican Party in the places the historic heartlands of the Republican Party and a turn led by women representatives in congress and its not just social justice warriors. I was president of a federal society chapter. I knocked on doors for Ronald Reagan in 1980. Im offended by it. It wounds me and i agree with ann of course, ann is right that hispanic is a category thats invented in america to describe people coming from many different countries, but, you know, how you create an identity like that is by abusing people, that people all identities are artificial. All of them and many of them arise in response to hostility. Americans felt more american during war time, during the cold war then they feel now because they felt under threat. If you dont want to subdivide your country between these different ethnic and cultural identities, treat people equally, treat them all with respect and that is something that donald trump cant do. Its not his business model. Its not his political model. He is going to leave behind a broken Republican Party, and its going to take a long time to recover. Hes going to leave behind a stronger american left because if you tell people, if you object to abusing your fellow citizens then youre a social justice warrior, well, i didnt think so, but if you tell me that i suppose i am. But the whole point is these are people excuse me, who arent our fellow citizens. Theyre the foreigners coming in. The reason is a lot of their fellow countrymen who got in before they did, are with trump on this is they left those countries. They wanted to live in america. We need time to assimilate people. Trump isnt talking and one other thing i wanted to mention because i will admit that the president did one thing that was kind of dopey. His original tweet i think is fully completely defensible and that is when he was talking about ilhan omar and i was thinking of the indian woman from the pacific northwest, i forget her name, and whos the other one . There are three who are actually immigrants, they are pedal to the metal pushing socialism and trumps tweet did not identify anyone. He said i thought it was kind of a funny tweet, actually. He said people who have fled dysfunctional, corrupt countries who come to this country, i guess i dont know if he called them the squad, and start bossing us around and telling us how to run our country. Hey, why dont you go back and fix your country, and once youve done it, you can come here and tell us how you did it. Now, what he did that was stupid because the tweet itself didnt name and youre right, the media started throwing in that representative pressley who is, of course, an africanamerican and a citizen. He didnt mention her, but instead of defending the defensible he just sort of went along with the medias characterization of whom he was referring to. I think if you are referring to people who are coming in from other countries and really arguing for a dramatic change in the way we run things, i think its a perfectly good point to say you fled a corrupt regime, your family was part of that corrupt regime, you got out one step ahead of the executioner so please dont come and tell us we have to adopt all the policies you had in your country. I just think its rude. Let me put two that way. I wouldnt go to someone someone elses country thinking i should be on tv bossing them around and im coming from a pretty successful country. I just think its rude. I feel a little less comfortable pointing to the dysfunction and corruption of other countries when the president of this country is making millions of dollars in undisclosed foreign payments. Every year. We are turning into kazakhstan at a pretty impressive rate of speed, and its disturbing. I have no idea what youre talking about. How much money theres a trump tower inasen boule. How much money is the trump family and the Trump Organization receiving in payments from that trump tower in istanbul . Is it zero, 1 million, 10 million . What percentage of their income comes from those towers . No one knows the answers. Maybe its nothing. Maybe its important, we dont know. Meanwhile, the president is making decisions now is trying to put his hotel in washington on the market for 500 million, much more than anybody thinks its worth. Why is it why does he even have such a hotel . Those are the kinds of things that are disturbing about our country but let me take on another point that i think is we talk about immigration amnesty and what we are going to do. Theres Something Like 12 Million People illegally present in the United States. Maybe more. Youre right, we dont know the exact number, but the usual guess is about 12 million, it may be more, it may be less. Apparently about half of that population has been here for more than 10 years so its very unlikely that theyre ever returning home. The peak period for illegal entry into the United States was the 1990s so those people here are more than 10 years are probably in their 40s and very soon blink of an eye theyll be in their middle 60s. What happens to them then . Theyre going to be in this country, theyre going to be older, theyre going to be in need of healthcare. What do we do about them . The problem of settling long settled people and making sure that they have some kind of social provision, that is also going to be part of finding our way to a stable and workable immigration solution. And so we are everyone is going to be doing things, if you ever do arrive at a solution, that they may have found kind of unthinkable, like making sure that long settled illegal immigrants, even though they are illegal some day enter the medicare system because otherwise, they will be in this country uncared for in their old age. And if you are going to do things like that, the people who advocate for that population are going to have to make some concessions. This cannot continue. We must see that the flow of ilLegal Immigration is stopped. We must see that the asylum system is not used as a back door to illegal entry, but we are going to have to do this together and were going to have to build a civic spirit. And Donald Trumps behavior makes all of that impossible. And we are going to be and any of the people in this room are people who are sympathetic to the president , i just ask you, when you think about the things you believe in, do you think youre going to be in a stronger position in 2022 than you are today . And i would put this question to ann. You have often written how betrayed you have personally felt by president trump. You have been very fierce about him. Everybody who ever trusts donald trump thinks im the one hes not going to break faith with. But he breaks faith with everybody, creditors, contractors, wives, everybody, hes going to break faith with you. applause i think thats an exaggeration. For one thing this Million Dollars because he owns trump hotels around, i think thats a little crazy. I mean, it can be there are examples, like Barack Obamas neighbor in chicago seems to have sold him a property that was very, very inexpensive and he wanted benefits from obama. You had who was it speaker wright who actually had a huge ethics violation, he would take money under the table is show up to give a speech, but the requirement was you cant be paid for the speech if youre a member of congress, but they can buy your book. So they would be required to buy 1,000 of his book. And they said no im sorry this is graft. If you can approve there is graft, everybody knew that trump owned these hotels, its sort of unusual having a businessman go in there. I dont think you can just say because he owns hotels and hes the president now well therefore thats proof of corruption and thats what i mean about people finding him so icky, theyre just so quick to say this must be corrupt because it involves trump. I dont think hes dividing the country as much as you say. I think liberals are dividing the country because theyve gone crazy. But theres not theres not another republican i cant think of another candidate that gets rallies like trump does and brings the trumpsters together, willing to take vicious attacks from antifa, willing to stand online for hours and hours. Boy, a lot of us are really together, these are the policies we want. In terms of what this is going to turn into, two things on being one betrayed and then the other what this will turn into. I was much more pessimistic before trump, even trump not keeping his promises because the most basic norm, you know, were always hearing about the norms hes violating, a norm is in democracy you present a slate of issues, this is the stuff im going to do, this is what my opponent is going to do, the people vote. And like i say, for half a century, weve been voting and they wont give it to us. They betray us, they betray us. The first george bush also betrayed us on no new taxes. The second george bush something david and i go back to a few issues where we were the lone voices in the wilderness and one was the first two out there opposing harriet meyers. That was insane. We got suitor and harriet meyers, trump has given us excellent judges, excellent justices. He totally kept his promise on that. So in terms of what kind of country it is, i think its much more dangerous when politicians just say screw you over and over and over again. Part of the reason so many people came out to vote for trump is that he seemed crazy enough that he might actually keep his promises. And he has kept some of them, not the central one, i think thats a much bigger issue of betrayal. Do you feel he has kept faith with you . The good news is on that, no. If you follow me on twitter, you know ive been a little testy with the president. And ive been saying, you know, giving speeches over the past month or so, look im sorry if you all support trump, but weve got 13 months to get him to keep his promises because either he loses and we dont have a second term, or he wins and hes not running for reelection again so he doesnt have to keep his promises, and then it will be nothing, but pushing trump hotels. And then i realized with this latest impeachment thing, theyre never going to stop trying to remove trump from office. They are never, ever going to stop. The entire left and the entire medias position is get this monster out of my sight. And it doesnt matter, they will grab on to any attack in a storm. Theyre never going to stop so i realized actually to my delight that theyre never going to get stop. If he wins a second term, hes going to have to worry about impeachment and removal so well still have to force him to keep his promises, but if you or jared are watching, youve got to build 400 miles of the wall before next november. applause we have a couple more minutes left, but i want to get your quick on looking ahead to 2020. How much do you think trump and how much do you think the democrats will run on immigration as a top issue . I think it is going to become an issue that is very central. The democrats will go very left on it. The barack obama of 2008 would be completely unnominatable in the Democratic Party of today. And, of course, trump will i think trump actually will be more cautious of the immigration issue than the democrats because at this point, it does cut against him, but its going to be central and thats going to make it harder to solve because anns model of how politics works maybe describes a parliamentary democracy like britain, canada or australia. The two parties offer their platforms, one wins, it implements it. That is not how it works in the United States. There isnt a government, there isnt an opposition. Candidates run on proposals, and then everyone understands that the real bargaining happens after the election. Thats the Affordable Care act that barack obama passed in 2010 doesnt look a lot like what he campaigned on in 2008 and the same will be true for the democrats with their healthcare plans. To make those kinds of negotiations work, you need to build a consensus and you need above all a president who can go on television, speak to the country and rally it and donald trump has never even tried to do that because theres the one bit of selfknowledge that he has is he is not the president of the United States. Hes the president of 45 of the United States. applause i dont think he thinks that. And no, i know there are compromises, david, but what im talking about with immigration is way more than oh, we had to make a compromise. It is just outright betrayal. We ran on immigration and screw you, voters, the donors want their cheap labor. It was with mcconnell, it was and they gave quotes at the time like i say before the 2014 election, theyre all promising right and left, you want us to stop obamas unconstitutional executive amnesty, youve got to give us a majority in the senate. And by the way, voters were a little down on republicans. There was that tea party spirit out there, there was still some Tea Party Style candidates primarying incumbent republicans. I was on tv saying no republicans please dont vote for the Tea Party Candidate now, we just need a majority. First, you get a majority, then you improve the republican whos already there. They win in a huge landslide that year, and then george will among others and mitch mcconnell, they say well its not fair because the media will blame us if we quote shut down the government. Oh, well, you didnt tell us you wouldnt do it if it was hard, if you had only told us, unless the media opposes us, that isnt what they said when they were running. Its an outright betrayal. Marco rubio promising he would never push amnesty in the senate because he had been very bad in the florida legislature, which is why Joyce Coffman asked him about it on his radio show. He gets to the u. S. Senate, first bill, amnesty. That isnt we had to compromise. That is an outright betrayal and why . Because the donors want the money. They want the cheap labor and they want to make more money and they dont care about this country, they dont care at all. One thing that sort of surprised me, i never realized how much i hated the Republican Party until trump came along. The official Republican Party. I hope it is remade more in trumps image of running on popular issues, being able to vote on this basket of issues and not oh, were going to throw out popular things and then betray you once youre in. I hope we do get that with trump. That would be a nice change, but thus far, republicans seem very, very slow learners. The 1986 amnesty, when i was writing adios, america, i was wondering because weve done this before. I mean, its not like well, i wonder what will happen if we pass amnesty. There were 3 million illegals then, in 10 years there were 11 million. What happened to the employer sanctions . There was a tradeoff. Were going to amnesty the 3 million here, but were going to secure the border and there will be brutal employer sanctions if you hire an illegal alien. Theyre hard workers, i bear them no ill will. I want to raise the wages of my fellow americans so what happened to that . It was republicans who stopped it because their donors wanted the cheap labor. It was my own party that stopped the employer sanctions. The democrats want more and more of the third world coming here for the votes and the republicans want it for the cheap labor. We have been betrayed so many times. Trump, if he does keep his promises on immigration, and he doesnt have much time left, hell deserve to be on mt. Rushmore. Weve got to wrap it up, but i can give you a very quick response. Ill say, ann has been a much more central person in the republican world than i have been. Ive been on the outs for a while on many issues but one of the things that donald trump has taught me is actually the Republican Party is precious to me, i care about it. And hes breaking it. As hes breaking so many other things i care about. And hes going to break if you care about the immigration issue, hes going to break that, too. He has never kept faith with anyone in his life. He will not keep faith with you. I want to say i appreciate the chance to have a civil conversation about immigration, to get into the contrasting vies but also a couple of areas where you agree, as well. Lets give a big round of applause to ann and david. Thank you very much. applause thank you. This hearing is called to order. I want to thank you for your written testimony and prayer oral testimony and the answers to our questions. I asked that my written Opening Statement be put in the record. On to make a couple of comments about what i want to see the goal of the searing to be