Welcome to hardtalk. Im stephen sackur. In a few days time, americans will give their verdict on president donald trump. Do they want four more years of mr trump in the white house, or will they opt for the other septuagenarian, joe biden, wholly different in style and worldview . Well, my guest is former republican congressman and loyal Trump Campaigner, Jack Kingston. The polls say trump is in big trouble. Is there good reason to think they are wrong . Theme music plays Jack Kingston in washington, dc, welcome to hardtalk. Thank you, stephen. You are a loyal Trump Campaigner. It strikes me that, when you are in a position like yours, there is a fine line to tread between optimism and realism. In the spirit of realism can you acknowledge to me that the Trump Campaign is in deep trouble . Well, i would say this, it is a tough competitive race but we know that last time, 2016, we went into election day having hardly won a single poll. I think something is going on in polls. Ive read lots of them, not just for president ial races but for my own races and many other candidates and they have been wrong many, many times. I am not saying they are not useful but they are not 100 reliable. So as i look back at 2016 i think here we are again. But another thing, stephen, is if you look at where isjoe biden spending his time, and he is in the same states as we are arizona, pennsylvania, north carolina, florida, ohio the so called swing states. If he had the double digit leads which some outlets are reporting that he has, he would not be going to those states, instead he would be going to another state he only had a single digit in, to try grow his lead, or grow seats in the us senate and house. But hes not doing that. And so what i do believe is that our internal polls and their internal polls are telling them and us something a lot different than we read into the newspaper. I absolutely take the point that we cannot rely on polls, experience tells us that, but one thing that we see consistently in opinion surveys, including pew surveys that go far beyond the usual polling to survey many thousands of people at the same time, is that americans are deeply dissatisfied with Donald Trumps handling of the coronavirus crisis. Would you at least accept that . I think that they are but i think they are also looking on just frustration in the general that you have a new disease, a new virus that were dealing with in real time and there have been mistakes. I mean, you look at the world health organization, which originally said that it was not transmitted human to human, and the who did not declare it a pandemic until late march certainly a misstep. Joe biden said that our travel ban from china was xenophobic, when President Trump implemented it in january so and the other thing. Hang on, hang on, mr kingston, joe biden has not been in power for the last eight months, donald trump has and, in the past eight months, there were some pretty stunning mistakes that donald trump has made. If one thinks about his decision as he said it to downplay the virus from the very beginning to the American Public. He never levelled with the American People. He told them that facemasks were not necessary. He refused a mask for an awful long time that clearly was a huge mistake. And right now, seven or eight months after this disease hit the United States, we have 43 of your states where the levels of infection are still rising. That is shameful. You know what though is true, is that the death level has stabilised and that is very significant. We have far more capacity than we did in february and we have that because of donald trump. We went out and made sure we had plenty of ppes, plenty of hospital beds. Donald trump sent ships, mercy ship, and the ship named comfort, to los angeles and new york city for access bed capacity, a private organisation set up beds in central park as temporary facilities. Those were not used but it was the democrat mayor of new york, andrew cuomo, who sent Healthy People to Nursing Homes and they were infecting people. Democrat governor of new york. Something like i0,000 50,000 people have died in a new york state Nursing Homes because of that stupid, incredibly dumb move. Also look at the state. Mr kingston, obviously i am on the show to challenge you about donald trump, who is your man. We challenge democrats on their records but i need you to address Donald Trumps record. That is the whole point of this interview, and i want to ask you whether you think it is right that in a democracy, the democratically elected president deliberately and consciously chooses to mislead the American People from the very get go . I dont think he was misleading people at all. If you look at the panic level of people rushing out to buy toilet paper, we had shortages. We had shortages of paper towels. You could not get masks. And the reason why we were trying to prioritise masks is so that people in healthcare, in hospitals and Healthcare Facilities had masks, because the average person originally did not need a mask and that was part of the cdc and the who and everybody else. It was a big controversy about masks. But the reason why it is relevant about the democrats is that if donald trump is going to get the full blame, which is not accurate, but if he does have the blame for anything that goes wrong with coronavirus, we need to look at the american system which actually says the governors of the 50 states have Huge Authority in terms of the management of coronavirus. Excuse me, but mr kingston, the point is, donald trump repeatedly undermined the authority of the states and their leadership, the governors, in particular, for example, back in april, he was screaming at states, like minnesota, to lift the very serious lockdown conditions theyd imposed on their people. You remember those tweets from donald trump, screaming out, liberate minnesota. He was undermining the state democratically elected officials. I actually believe that the excessive crackdowns have led to problems in their own right. Suicide and drug abuse and spouse abuse and depression because people have not been allowed to leave their houses and, in many cases, these people are young people, that are not the high vulnerable population. Statistically, if we want to follow the science, we have to admit that the people who are 70 years old or older, particularly those with pre existing illnesses, they are the most vulnerable and that is where we should be focusing, not on young people who are very healthy. The thing that is so important is, under cdc guidelines, their only guidelines that local Municipal Health authorities still have the ultimate say so about schools and playgrounds and cafeterias and Food Distribution and so i mean, it is nice during an Election Year to blame all the problems on one person but it is a decentralised system and local authorities have had a major role in the coronavirus response. One big issue in the campaign, clearly, is not just coronavirus, but it is the American Healthcare system. It seems a very challenging environment for you republicans, and donald trump in particular, to go to the American People and say that you continue to want to completely undermine and repeal obamas Affordable Healthcare Act and yet you still have no idea what youd put in its place. Is that a message that will resonate with the American People . I think it is because people know that the healthcare sector of the economy is huge and major and it does not lend itself to centralised planning. I look at your Healthcare System i got sick twice when i have been in the uk, and the last time i actually went to a private doctor because the hotel that i was staying in said, if you want to see a doctor today, you have to go to a private doctor, and i paid for it with my own mastercard and i was fortunate to be able to afford to do that. Here is a system totally outside of the government and it worked well it worked well for me, so i have seen it. And that is what happens in countries with socialised medicine. But are you aware that between february and may, of this year, as the coronavirus really gripped the United States, 5 Million People lost their Health Insurance because they lost their jobs and, according to the kaiser foundation, a non party, highly respected medical research organisation, 80 of those people were still covered, still got healthcare because of the reforms in the Affordable Healthcare Act, that is the link between coronavirus and healthcare and donald trump wants to destroy that. Well, actually, the way they got their healthcare in the absence of employer sponsored healthcare was through medicaid and that has always as been there for people who fall through the cracks financially, and what we do know as americans is that we want to keep our own private healthcare. If we had that option, joe biden wants to take away the private healthcare of americans. We do not like that. We dont think there should be an Insurance Company or a Government Agency between our doctors and ourselves. Whatjoe biden promises is that, with his extension of the affordable healthcare, he will ensure 97 of americans are covered, one way or another. He will take away my healthcare, i want to keep my own healthcare. Now, someone who wants to depend on the government, theyll probably will have that option, they can go through a government exchange, if that is what they want, but personally speaking i do not think the government is very effective. One aspect of this domestic policy agenda that trump is fighting on is healthcare, another is the economy. And his message to the us people is ive delivered on the economy, ive truly made the American Economy great again and he points to the stock market which albeit had a big dip because of coronavirus but it is still high theres no doubt about that. But do you think that is really the measure that most American People care about, when the jobless rate in the United States has soared over the last seven months . Do you think they are all looking at the stock market and celebrating . I think they are looking at theirjobs more than the stock market, and the interesting thing is that the Unemployment Rate now is the same as it was when joe biden left office. So Whenjoe Biden talks about the recovery he brought, he had unemployment at the same level that we have, and unemployment right now is way too high. This is what it was during the malaise of the obama biden years. We have to go back to 2019 when we had historically low Unemployment Rates for african americans, for hispanic americans, for women in the workplace, for younger people people out making money and wages were going up. The v shape recovery that we are having under donald trump right now is whats going to save america. 2021 is going to be a very, very strong year if donald trump is in the white house. I guess it depends whether the American Public believe that. Because they will remember his promises 2016 he was promising the industrial midwest michigan and other states, wisconsin he promised them that they would once again be the manufacturing hub of the world. Look at the recent reality. General motors, for example, recently announced another shutdown. In lordstown, ohio, theyve got five other plants that they plan to shut down. This restoration, this magical reinvention of American Manufacturing in those key swing states, it just has not happened. Stephen, that sounds a little bit like what barack obama and Hillary Clinton and joe biden said in 2016, that it is never going to come back, we are never going to have manufacturing. Yet what we found under donald trump, with tougher trade agreements and watching out for Foreign Companies dumping their products in america, manufacturing did come back. All the survey evidence across the midwest is that it hasnt come back. If you are looking at the big data look for example at Donald Trumps promise to completely rebalance the trading relationship with china because he said and its a nasty phrase but ill use it he said that the chinese have been raping the us economy and us workers. Look at the reality, the trade deficit with china, when he took office was 31 billion guess what it is today . Around 31 billion. He has not delivered on his economic promises. Well, what do you think joe biden is going to do when his son is on the payroll of Chinese Companies . Forgive me, i am not talking aboutjoe biden, im talking about donald trump. Donald trump is the incumbent. Donald trump is the guy with a record to run on and this is the record that we are discussing today. But were also talking about the election and the choice americans have. Donald trump, in the words of mike pence, at least has engaged in the economic war with china. Donald trump has been out there fighting for tougher agreements, fighting against intellectual property theft, fighting against forced technology transfers, fighting against china using the sea lanes that belong to japan or international waters, he has fought against many other technologies that china has been stealing from around the world. I think that is a good thing. What i would love to see is a more United Coalition with European Countries being part of this because i think together we can stand up to china but right now it is just very, very hard to go it alone but donald trump had to do that because the International Community has not given him the support they should have and they know they want it by the way. I want to say this, as a member of congress for 22 years, democrats and republicans have been talking this game forever. Donald trump finally did something about it. Well, you keep telling me donald trump has delivered. And weve discussed it in the economy, weve discussed it in healthcare. How do you feel when donald trump just brazenly lies about his record . And im thinking, for example, how on the campaign trail over the last week or so he has been telling mass audiences that mexico has paid for the wall. Thats not true. I think theres a lot of hyperbole in that, stephen. And im not going to argue that. But i can say this, Whenjoe Biden says im for fracking, im against fracking, im forfracking, im against fracking, you can keep your own healthcare, no, were going to take it away through socialised medicine, or im not going to tell you if im going to pack the Supreme Court or not, those are lies. When he says that he never had anything to do with his sons dealings with burisma, but now we know that there was a meeting in the white house about it 100 lies. So, unfortunately, if youre looking for purity, you might find it in the pulpit, maybe not, youre not going to find it in politics. Im not saying thats an excuse for it, but im saying part of this is a rough and tumble game where theres a lot of hyperbole. It sounds like youre to excuse Donald Trumps untruths it sounds like youre more ready to excuse Donald Trumps untruths and falsifications than many people who worked much more closely with him than you ever have are prepared to do. Im thinking, for example of former defense secretary james mattis, who has accused trump of making a mockery of the us constitution. Im thinking ofjohn kelly, his former white house chief of staff, a guy he drafted in cos he trusted him so much, and kelly now says the depths of his dishonesty, that is trumps dishonesty, are just astounding to me. These are guys who know trump very well, very personally, seen him in action, and they dont trust him one inch to represent americas best interests. But, stephen, everything youve said, quoting them, quoting them, and im sure youve quoted them accurately, they arejust opinions. If i say, that guy is a rascal, thats opinion. If i sayjoe biden came out against fracking, then he said hes for fracking, and then he says hes against it, that can be proven as a fact. Those are statements he has made. But with respect, mr kingston. Saying Donald Trumps a bad guy, that is an opinion. Crosstalk mr kingston, i think youre misunderstanding what a lie is. Joe biden may flip flop on issues, thats not the issue today, but flip flopping isnt lying. Donald trump has proven to be a teller of untruths. And i can catalogue literally hundreds if not thousands of them. But it doesnt really matter what i think, its what his own closest associates think. Thats what disturbs the American People. But none of those statements youve said from mattis were said were a lie. Those were still based on opinions. Those were opinions that they had. We do know for a factjoe biden said he had nothing to do with Hunter Bidens dealings with burisma and the corrupt company that he was on the board of. He said he never met with them. But we know now that he did meet with them. In