Tell me what you really believe about Trump. I’m not sure that he is a deep thinker. I think he goes off his gut, and his gut has served him well for what he does. He speaks in dog whistles. Whether he knows it or not, he does. And the people around him definitely do. I do think there are those around him who are deep thinkers. [Campaign chief] Steve Bannon is one of them, from Breitbart. Bannon is putting together a coalition. He knows who he’s bringing into the tent. The average American doesn’t. And this has been really concerning to me. I warned about this three years ago: the influence of Alexander Dugin. I pointed this out and said, “You don’t know what you’re getting into bed with.”
Who is Alexander Dugin? He is somebody that people really should be paying attention to. You’ll see that 48 percent of Trump supporters believe Putin is a good guy. This comes from [Dugin’s] neo-Eurasian movement that’s happening over in Russia and starting to spread into Europe. Dugin was pouring money into church organizations here in America [to fight] gay marriage. When I was on Fox, I warned that you would see the neo-Nazis start to rise in Europe, and it would jump over to us, and it would infect the Right, and it has. You saw this. The neo-Nazis, the Klan, and the white supremacists signed a pact to stand together. They feel this is their opportunity. You’ve united them plus this populist movement and nationalism. It’s a toxic, toxic brew that’s part of this neo-Eurasian movement.
Explain Donald Trump’s appeal. There’s an underlying thing: “I don’t feel like I really belong to anything anymore. I don’t know what the country means. I don’t feel comfortable in my church, in my party.” The Right really felt like nobody was listening. Accusing them of being violent or racist when they just wanted to be heard. Trump has tapped into this and taken the small number on the alt-right that are racist, and they have energized this movement. People are in a position where some want to burn the whole thing down.
How does America come out of this? If we are going to survive this as a great nation, if we’re going to reverse the trend—the inevitable trend that always happens at the end of empires—if we are to reverse it, and I think we can, we have to know the difference between authenticity and transparency, know the difference between the justice that we have going on now and real, true, equal justice. We’ve been a stable country—the reason why people invest in us, and the reason why we are the leader in the world, is because we’re stable. We don’t have revolutions. I don’t think we [value rule of law] anymore. It started with the financial bailouts. I’m not too big to save. You’re not too big to save. But financial institutions are too big to fail.
Can you imagine voting for Hillary Clinton? No. There’s two candidates that I’m OK with, but I am not now, nor have I ever been, a supporter of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. I think that the Right has—and rightly so in many ways—been trained that Hillary Clinton is the worst thing that could happen to us. [Trained] by the media, by the parties, by people who look for ratings, for votes. [But] the worst thing that could happen to us is that we would lose ourselves, we would lose who we are and our principles.
Some Republicans may vote for her. There are a lot of Republicans that are now looking at her, and they’re voting for [Trump], something that they would never dream of doing. Anyone who listens to me, they know how I feel about Hillary Clinton. I think the press is so freaked out by Donald Trump [they’re saying], “Let’s not just really look at WikiLeaks. Let’s just not look at some of these scandals, and the FBI, let’s just not look at it right now.” When that passes, if the press wants their credibility back, they must go back and say, “We must stand for equal justice” even if it furthers my side.
What should be the first order of business for Hillary Clinton if she’s elected president? Take a stance and de-weaponize something. Do something that hurts your party cause—not your principles but your party cause. Do something. Put it on the table and say, “In the spirit of coming together, it’s important that we restore this principle.” And I don’t know if anybody’s willing to do that, but that’s what—I think that’s what has to happen. Words won’t cut it anymore. Somebody has to be bigger. Somebody has to sell sacrifice.Watch Charlie Rose on Bloomberg TV weeknights at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. ET.
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