Frank Luntz

So yeah, before we go back to the beginning of 2016, I actually want to take us to a moment in 2020, which is election night. So on the night of the election, Trump comes out, and he gives a speech, and he says, "Frankly, I won. I won this election." So I'm wondering if you could help take me there. What are you thinking in that moment? What are you watching?

I'm in my home here in Washington, D.C. I'm getting not just the network feeds, but I've got access to the polling data. I've got access to the exit polls. I've got access to the counts that are about five or six minutes ahead of the public. And I am saying to senators and congressmen and journalists who are calling me about every 90 seconds, "This is not a repeat of 2016"; that this is how the election's going to resolve. And I honestly, I blame the media for some of this. We knew that people who voted on Election Day were going to vote overwhelmingly for Trump. We knew that people who voted absentee were going to vote overwhelmingly for Biden. We knew that people who voted early would vote overwhelmingly for Biden, and that the way some states count their votes, it would seem like Donald Trump was in the lead. We knew this. All you had to do was study the rules of each state, and you knew how the results were going to come out.

And I was very public about this, starting about 10 days before the election. The media has to tell people that this is going to happen this way, or somebody like a Donald Trump will completely misread the results and claim that these votes are being, and I quote, "dumped." They were never dumped. For most states, you count the votes that happen on Election Day first; then you count the early votes second; and lastly you count the absentee ballots. So Trump was always going to have a lead on election night, which of course he did. And that lead would become smaller and smaller and eventually disappear as all those early votes were counted.

We knew from the polling, from daily work, that this is how it was going to develop. And so it was so frustrating to me to watch some people, including FiveThirtyEight, actually switch the odds and say that Donald Trump is more likely to win. So it's all playing into his psyche. It's all happening exactly as we projected it would. And you know what? I think it's quite possible that Donald Trump actually thought that he was winning, actually believed that he was ahead, and I hold the media responsible for not explaining to the voters how this process works.

Now, I know it'll never happen again, but damn it, they contributed to this false impression that created the "big lie" that Donald Trump had actually been elected. And it has really done serious, if not irrevocable, damage to democracy as we know it, because in the days that followed, we know from our polling that as high as 72% of Trump voters thought that he'd won the election. … We know that as high as 72 percent of Trump voters thought that he'd won the election as of Jan. 6, 2021. So on that day that people took to the streets and they took to the Capitol, on that day, a majority of Trump voters, a clear majority, an overwhelming majority thought in fact that Trump had been robbed. And no such thing had happened. But it happened because the American people were never taught how to count ballots. And I just think that our democracy is in a lot of hurt right now because of it.

So if you look at that moment, though, there was a real test for the Republican Party, right, because they could've come out and said something, but there was silence on the part of a lot of the leaders. So what's the decision that they had to make, or what are they up against? And what did their silence represent?

You have to decide as a Republican leader at that moment, do you respond to your Republican constituents who overwhelmingly think that Trump did win the election? Do you respond with—towards the American people with all constituents in mind, which at that point was about a third of the public thought the election had been robbed? Do you simply ask to take one last look at these votes, which is what was behind most of those people on the 6th of January? Most of the elected officials who did vote were not voting to overturn the election. The truth is, the fact is, they were voting to simply analyze one last time—because the various courts had not let them do that—the actual returns in Pennsylvania, in Arizona, in Georgia and a couple other states.

Even at that point, it was clear to people like me that Trump had lost. … But on the 6th of January, it was not clear to a majority of Republicans that Trump had lost. So the decision that they're making really wasn't so insane, because they're actually responding to what their own constituents were telling them to do. That said, it was a minority of constituents overall in most districts, and those of us who have any kind of election science under our belts, who had studied the electorate and what had actually happened and were aware of the way that votes were counted, we knew that Trump had lost. We knew that that was clear and that no investigation, no recount of the votes was necessary.

But I get it. I do understand why Republican leaders in many cases felt it necessary to ask one more time for a recount. The problem was for the public, a recount wasn't enough for the grassroots Republicans. And let me be specific: For grassroots Trump voters, a recount wasn't enough because they thought at this point—thank you, Donald Trump—that the election had in fact been stolen.

Can you help us understand these constituents that you're describing? Tell us a little bit more about them.

We were doing focus groups all throughout November, December and January, and some of them appeared on television. And I invite you to use them because I own them. All you have to do is listen to what they had to say, and they thought that their democracy was being taken from them, literally ripped from them. And they were fighting angry. They're patriots, but misguided. They were determined to tell the truth, or want the truth to be told, even if that truth was actually a lie. And as much—I'm torn. I'm sitting here right now, and I'm torn because they're not trying to mislead. They're actually trying to save their country. They are absolutely, positively wrong on the 6th of January, 100% wrong.

And they were being misled by the president of the United States, eagerly, aggressively. But they really thought that the country was at stake, and they really thought that this was, to use Trump's own words, because he'd been saying it again and again, the crime of the century. And it's pretty hard to be mad at people who have come to this point of view for understandable reasons, even if that point of view is completely and utterly wrong.

So you say that—leaders who by the end of the week are amplifying some of these questions that are surrounding the election. So what message does that send?

Look, I don't know if you can use this language, but on the 6th of January, that was the ultimate s--- show for America. And it was a show because it was on TV. It was everywhere. People are talking about it; they're reacting to it. We're shocked and stunned as the events of that afternoon took place. I was in Washington. I live walking distance from the Capitol. I took the most amazing photograph. And I'd had a stroke a year earlier, so I'm really careful about COVID. And nobody's masked up; everyone's on the streets. And this is a very different mood, a very different level of anger that I've now seen. And a woman is holding this wonderful sign up, and it says, "Republicans don't riot." Little does she know and little do I know that minutes from my taking a photograph of that picture is when Trump voters started to break into the Capitol and when they engaged in an all-out full-force riot.

I don't know what you call it. I don't know if it's an insurrection. I don't know if it's—I don't know the language. As a language person, I should know this. And I still to this day cannot define what happened on that day. But I do know how horrible it was, how embarrassing it was, how frightening it was. And I got within one block. And they were not letting cop cars through. They were not letting security people through. This is not how Trump voters behave. And I'm wondering, what the hell is going on? Because to me, it was over. It was simply a counting of the votes. I've got a ticket to that count. I've got a ticket to the Capitol, to the Senate Chamber and the House Chamber from that day.

I've saved it, and I'm framing it. And I've even got a T-shirt—and I should've brought it here—that I purchased in Georgia on the day before the vote there, where two incumbent Republicans lost their election because Donald Trump is telling them again and again in Georgia that elections don't matter, that he'd been robbed, that he'd been stolen, that this was a travesty. All of his possible communication on the day before the Georgia Senate election that encouraged enough Republicans to stay at home, it cost them the election, cost the GOP the Senate. And now he's screaming about his own election.

Look, I've never seen people so motivated by an individual so selfish, so self-centered. And they were willing to fight for him. They were willing to walk from the White House to the Capitol and take matters into their own hands for a man who had literally cost them the United States Senate, and we've seen the results. We've seen the consequences of that. And knowing the results of that election, they were still willing to take the Capitol on his behalf. It's mind-blowing. It's indescribable. People ask me, because I teach foreign students every year, twice a year, and they ask me, what was it like? And my only answer is, indescribable, because America on that day, at least the American democracy, came apart. And I'm not convinced that even now, 18 months later, we're fully together, we're fully back, we're fully repaired. The truth is I don't think we are. And I wonder if we'll ever, ever go back to those days, because what I saw and what happened because of this president and his communication—and congratulations, Mr. Trump, if you're watching.

Congratulations, because you got these people all spun up. You are a great communicator. But you told them a lie, and they responded to you. So congratulations on being so efficient and so effective with your language. Congratulations on getting your people to fight back, and even today, 40% of your vote still thinks that you were duly elected president. Man, the damage that has been done.

[Is Trump leading] them, or are they leading Trump? How does it work?

There was a base. And this began in 2015, just as it did in 1992 for Ross Perot. There are people who were angry. They were ignored, forgotten or even the most horrible of all, betrayed by their government, and they were mad. And they heard Donald Trump, and they thought, finally someone gets us; someone understands us. These are working-class voters. These are union voters. These are people in the states like Pennsylvania and Michigan, Wisconsin, states that vote Democrat in the presidential race but often vote Republican for governor. These are blue-collar, working-class voters—many of them never went to college—struggling in a tough economy and feeling like America had broken its promise to them. And they loved everything that Donald Trump said, and it had become a cult of personality.

It had become not just about the policy—and the truth is, it was never really about the policy. It was about the man and the communication. And anyone who says that Donald Trump is [not] a great communicator does not understand these voters, because he had them wrapped around their finger. And I respect them for how hard they work. These are people who don't take a government check, who don't want a bailout from Washington and never got one. The people who switched from Republican and voted Democrat in 2016 and 2020 and all the upper-middle-class college graduates, an awful lot of them benefitted from the government largesse after the economic crash of 2008. An awful lot of them get corporate welfare.

These are your small-business owners who are struggling, your union members who were at that line between working and nothing. And they don't take a government check. They deserve our respect; they deserve the dignity of hard work; they deserve so much more than they got from Donald Trump. And by 2020, they were totally loyal. And they had abandoned their Democratic roots. They had abandoned their Democratic philosophy, and they were fully in the Trump camp. And if they vote Republican, Trump wins.

The difference between 2016 and 2020 was Donald Trump himself. In 2016, Trump is fighting for them. He was about them and their concerns and their worries. He was about them being left behind, and he promised them a better shake, a more honest, more credible government—draining the swamp, all the language that he used. He promised to make their lives better, and he promised it would be about them. … In 2016, Hillary Clinton ran a campaign that says, "I'm for her," which is selfish and self-centered. She didn't understand that that was all about her. Trump took the opposite approach: "I'm for you. I will fight for you. I will listen to you. I will learn from you. I will back you. I will struggle for you." By 2020, it was all about him and all the indignities that he had faced.

And I don't believe he understands this. I know that other people in the White House do, and they just didn't have the guts to speak out. But by 2020, it was all of the things that had been done to him, all of the investigations, the impeachments. And it was all about getting even, him getting even. And he lost enough votes between 2016 and 2020, and frankly, it was that first debate when he just yelled at Joe Biden and couldn't shut up. He, to this day—I know he thinks he won that debate, and it was the worst performance in debate history. From the moment he stepped on stage and wouldn't keep quiet until the moment he got off after 90 minutes, he lost that election, because a lot of the Trump women who had voted for him in 2016 said, "I don't want another four years of this." And despite the efforts of all the people who debate-prepped the president, he didn't listen to any of them.

He didn't want to listen to any of them. And voters looked at this and said, "No more." So those states that he had won, he lost. He even lost Georgia. He lost Arizona. And yes, he lost them. And he lost them because it was his own fault. This is how Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans added seats at the same time Trump was losing them. This is how Republicans won governorships all across the country at the same time Trump was losing. The fact is, Donald Trump became a drag on the ticket in 2020, not a leader of the ticket, as he had been. And it's his own damn fault because of how he behaved and how he spoke. If it had remained about the people, if it remained about those individuals that he was willing to fight for and speak up for, he would have won. If he had not behaved like such a jerk in that debate, he would have won.

Donald Trump was this far away from winning reelection. He was his own worst enemy. He'll turn this off at the moment it comes on, but he was never willing to hear the truth. He never wanted the truth, and the problem was he had too many people serving him that, by the end, they didn't tell him the truth. They weren’t willing to fight with him; they weren’t willing to be fired by him, because Donald Trump can't handle the truth.

So yes, so election night happens, and the big lie, though, begins to take root in this period between election night and Jan. 6.

Understand what happened on election night. Understand that Trump pulls ahead. That is, looking at 1 a.m. and 2 a.m., and you've got FiveThirtyEight now giving their projections that Trump is actually going to win the election. And you've got people around Trump saying, "We've got this. The only way we're going to lose is if it's stolen from us." And he's winning in Pennsylvania by 100,000 votes, which is not insignificant. He's up in these other states. I'm like, guys, you don't know how these votes are counted. Be careful. And he'd won Florida by a bigger margin in 2020 than he won in 2016. So in his head, he's thinking, oh, my God, we actually pulled this out. Once again, the polls were wrong. Well, no, they weren't wrong. At least the exit polls were not wrong.

What was wrong were the polls that were taken right up to Election Day. And once again, once again, so many of these famous outlets, the major pollsters, were giving Joe Biden leads of 10, 12, 15. I think one of the polls had Biden winning by 17 points in Wisconsin with, what, a week to go or 10 days to go? So Trump is now thinking in his head that they got it wrong again, and the only way that he loses now is if they steal it from him. That's why he declares victory, and that's why you start the whole process of that big lie, because then you've got to count the absentee ballots, and they're exactly the opposite. And no, there isn't someone in the corner filling them in. These are people who are going to vote for Joe Biden. And if the pollsters had just damn asked that question and had cross-tabbed it—are you voting on Election Day; did you vote early; are you voting by absentee?—this never would've happened. But they never put that information out.

But in the weeks after—I mean, once the votes are in, right, Biden is victorious, right?

Yes, it was clear that it was going the other way within 12 hours. So by 8 a.m. of Wednesday, it is moving towards Biden. By 8 p.m. of Wednesday, it's moving irrevocably towards Biden. By Thursday at 8 a.m., the votes are now crossing, but there's still enough to be out there. And by 8 p.m. Thursday night, it's now clear, but you can't call it, that Joe Biden's going to be the next president. But in that crucial 48 hours, Donald Trump is told by people around him that they're stealing your election, and he doesn't get that out of his head.

So after it's clear that Biden is the winner, there is still murmurs about the big lie, and there is a period where Republican leaders face a choice. So what's the choice that the Republican leaders face?

It's a really, really difficult choice. People will try to simplify it, but I get how difficult it was. Again, we're polling on this. Seventy-two percent of Trump voters think he won the election. Are you going to ignore them? Are you going to say their expectations or their beliefs don't count? It's not a matter of overturning the election; it's simply listening to their voice and saying, hold on a minute. Or do you go with the majority of the country that believes correctly that Joe Biden is the president? It's actually not that easy a question to answer when it's not about overturning the election. It's simply to go back and recount the votes. I wish they'd done that immediately. I wish that'd been the process. It wasn't.

Look, this whole documentary is about democracy, and it's about the consequences of what happened in 2020 and going back five years before that, the consequences of treating people with such little respect, of treating people with such little dignity, of telling people things that were patently untrue, of asking people to believe things that were not going to happen. And in the end, we have a s--- show. There's no other language. You can edit it out, but people will be able to read lips. That's what it is. What the president called foreign countries is what we created for our democracy right here in America. It's an embarrassment; it's a failure; it's every possible synonym you want to use for what's wrong in this country, and the problem is no one is trying to make it right. No one's trying to say, "Hey, let's get our act together. Let's acknowledge we got this wrong. Let's actually figure out what we need to learn instead of trying to haul people before hearings and subpoena people to embarrass them." Nobody on either side is actually saying "Enough!" …

The speaker of the House and the Republican leader, the leader of the Senate and the Republican leader of the Senate—my God, we are so close as a country. The Senate is 50/50. As a percentage, the House is 51/49. We're dead even. We are dead even as a country. You have a responsibility to stop playing political partisan games, because the people who are watching are pissed off, and they're frightened, and they have every right to be angry and every right to be afraid. You should be, because this is your democracy. It's been around for 250 years. In most cases across history, countries like ours go to hell after about 250 years. We're going to hell, so fix it already.

Wow, thank you.

It's not wow, by the way. This is just the facts. This is not a "wow" moment. This is not a "Hey, he's speaking the truth." The truth matters; the facts matter. But in the end, it's what you're going to do with it that matters most. Do something. Speaker Pelosi, stop trying to keep your job and sit down with Kevin McCarthy and come to some agreement. You are the speaker. You have the power. You know what's the most power in the world? The power to compromise. The power to hear the voices of those voices who are not heard. God damn it, Speaker, use your power for good. Use your voice for good. And I say the same thing on the Senate, where it's 50/50. Just sit down and figure out what we all can agree upon. Sit down, shut up, stop playing politics, because our president was elected as a uniter.

Joe Biden was elected to bring people together. He was supposed to be the Harry Truman of American democracy. Well, he decides after he's elected that he's going to govern like FDR, and because of that, he's actually been the least effective president since Jimmy Carter, and I've got the polling numbers to prove it. If you guys would just sit down and work with each other, the American people would get on board. But if you're trying to score points and trying to relive what happened on Jan. 6, you're helping nobody. So go ahead, do it.

Yeah, I want to take us back, though, just to this moment, the lead-up to Jan. 6, because you are talking with congressional leaders; you're talking with senators, representatives. What are they telling you in this lead-up?

The first thing I realized is that all the Democrats are wearing masks and all the Republicans aren't. So even visually, they've now polarized themselves, even on their own health. I keep asking the questions: Are you sitting down? Are you having these conversations? And the answer is no. Are you trying to find a solution that doesn't make a horrible situation even worse? The answer is no on either side. … Something that you don't know: I was offered great seats for the inauguration, amazing seats, because I've known Joe Biden going back to 1988. I taught Beau Biden in 1989. So I've known the family, and I could have had great seats, and I wanted no part of Washington, D.C., because it was so destroyed at this point. And in the lead-up to Jan. 6, it was already a mess, a crisis just waiting to happen.

No one's talking to each other. Everyone's bitter at each other. You've got the Senate that is hopelessly divided. They're waiting to choose the two seats in Georgia. Trump's telling people it's not worthy of voting. He's telling people that the democracy has failed—not broken, but failed. And the Democrats agree but for the opposite reasons. I think the only thing that we agree on is that it's broken, is that it's a mess, and no one's talking to each other. And I just wanted no part of it. So I decide that I'm not going to be around. I'm there on the 6th because I can't leave Washington right then. I'm going to be around for another week, but there's no way I'm staying for the inauguration. As it turned out, neither was Donald Trump.

What a disgrace. Every president has sat, election after election, close elections, blow-away elections—every former president sits and rides to the Capitol because it's what you do; it's how you behave. And he tells people he's not showing up. I mean, come on. What are you, a child? I used to behave that way. So let me be candid with you. I behaved the way Donald Trump behaved, but I was 8 years old when I did it, and I grew out of it by the time I was 9, because my parents were not raising a child; they wanted to raise a good adult. And I'm sorry that no one told the president that this is childish to behave that way.

Yeah.

I know this is not what you're expecting.

No, no, this is all fascinating, because you're talking about both sides not communicating, but you're talking to people who can do the communicating, right? I'm thinking Kevin McCarthy in the run-up to Jan. 6.

I know you wanted to ask me about the Republicans, but I'm also telling you that the Democrats don't want anything to do with the Republicans either. What you don't realize is that I am fortunate enough in my life to be able to talk to both sides. It is a wonderful gift that I don't take lightly. The Republicans don't want to talk to the Democrats; the Democrats don't want to talk to the Republicans. The Republicans are already afraid that their own constituents want to hang them if they don't slow things down, and the Democrats don't want to engage in this conversation because they can't wait to get rid of the president, who is still president. And I remind you that as this is going on, there is legislation that still needs to pass that will add more money to help people struggling because of COVID, will add a pay increase to our men and women in uniform, will keep the government functioning. And at this moment, nothing is happening in Washington.

Only a few people are engaged in the White House. Some people are packing up to leave. Donald Trump is not communicating to anybody, and the Democrats don't want to hear from him, because they know that they're about to put a president in power and they're about to change everything. So you can't just blame the Republicans, and you can't just blame the Democrats, and you can't just blame the new president, and frankly, you can't just blame the old president. They're all players in the most horrible play ever written that wasn't taken to Broadway and wasn't taken to Washington [and] is being played out on TV screens across the globe. And we've gone from a true beacon of hope and opportunity to the most embarrassing s--- show the world has seen in modern times. That's where we are. We were a shining city on the hill, and that shine has been erased. And it even makes me dizzy just talking about it.

… So I guess if we're just looking at Jan. 6, on that day, there are some very passionate speeches, right? People are denouncing this violence. It seems like something's changing, right, with these leaders and these speeches. Can you help describe what these speeches are about? You know, Mitch McConnell's speech, Kevin McCarthy's speech—it feels like something's changed that day, right?

It felt that way. And it clearly felt that way. And I knew it. It was the same kind of shake-up that I had only witnessed twice in the last 20 years: once when the stock market crashed in 2008, and people over a matter of days were losing their life savings, and it happened in 2001, in the terrorist attack that had killed a couple thousand people and made America vulnerable for the first time. I knew it, and we had not polled it; we had not focus-grouped it. But I knew that we were not the same country that night as we were that morning. And my conversations with elected officials was to communicate that. And I got back some disbelief, some rejection, some people saying that I didn't understand, that if it was the right thing to do at 8 a.m., it was still the right thing to do at 8 p.m. I knew they were wrong because I've spent the last 35 years listening to tens of thousands of people tell me what matters to them.

I actually think it's possible that I've talked to a million people, listened to a million people in my career. And I knew that that—at 8 p.m., 10 p.m., whenever it was, I knew that as they understood what had happened at the Capitol that afternoon, I knew that they would be changed. I knew that you could not see those pictures, those videos—and we did not have access to the really bad stuff at that time. But I knew that even at that moment, they would not hold the same point of view that they had before. And I tried to express that as best I could to any elected official from either party who was willing to listen. Some of them were, and some of them weren't. And my only regret is that I was not even more emphatic as I am now and I did not get into their face and say, "Dude, wake up."

… So let's go back. So there's—at the Republican National Convention in 2016, right, Trump comes out and gives a speech where he says, "I alone can fix it." So what was Trump selling at that point, and what were you thinking as you watched that speech?

That was his lowest point in that entire speech. We were dial-testing it as he's giving it with swing voters. And at that moment, the dials dipped lower than at any point in his entire convention speech, because for the first time and only time, at that moment, he sounded selfish and self-centered and arrogant. And they were concerned, because you had flashes of that in the 2016 campaign. But I also tested his line that "I'm for you; I'll fight for you; I'm all about you," and how powerful that was. And I'd argue that that was the moment when he won the election. No, we don't know it at the time, because things go up, things go down. You had his bus incident; you had Clinton's investigation by Comey and the FBI. But his tone at that moment, when he drew the contrast with Hillary Clinton, that it's all about her, whereas Trump is all about you, the voter—that was the same speech, and that speech and that sentiment is why he won the votes in the states that he won them in.

And was it a signal of what was to come?

I think both elements of the speech were a signal of what's to come. There is the Donald Trump that is going to change the way Washington works, which a clear majority of Americans embraced. There is the Donald Trump that is self-centered and communicates in a way that nobody would want their kids to speak, and we also heard that during that campaign. The Donald Trump that was about the voters' disappointment in, frustration with and rejection of Washington was a Donald Trump that would've and could've changed politics as we know it, could've fashioned a brand-new coalition that would've governed America for a decade or more. There is also the Donald Trump that was all about himself and his own grievances and his own resentments, and that Donald Trump would self-destruct. And we saw both Donald Trumps in evidence during that campaign.

We saw the good Donald Trump on election night when he was contrite and respectful, and we saw the bad Donald Trump the day of the inauguration in a speech that was more confrontational than any that had ever been delivered in an inauguration. Sounded more like a campaign speech than it did an inauguration speech. And once again, all the people around him, his political advisers, his appointees, all told him how great he was. And nobody was telling him, "Sir, there's a problem here. There's an opposition here that you're missing at the most amazing opportunity possible to reshape American politics in your own image. You're blowing it, sir; you're blowing it." And nobody was willing to do that.

And people quit, or maybe they would tell him once and they were fired. And it was—it really was a Greek tragedy. It was Shakespearean in how epic the rise and fall of Donald Trump was. What no one could've seen—and I certainly didn't—is that it wasn't just the fall of Donald Trump; that he would bring democracy down with him.

How so? Why do you say that he brought down democracy with him?

The events of 2020: the events of a debate that was more childish and embarrassing than any debate performance in American presidential history; the declaring of victory when all the votes weren't counted yet, and it was clearly up for grabs; the stoking of tension and division after the declaration of Joe Biden's election; and the events of Jan. 6 are all knives in the back of democracy. And they all played a role in what happened, and they continue to play a role today. And one point which I've not mentioned, have you looked at the advertising in these Republican primary races in 2020? Have you watched the debates? Have you seen how vicious and cruel these candidates are to each other, how disgustingly mean?

This was never the Republican Party that I grew up in. This is not Ronald Reagan. I remember Reagan said the words—he coined it, the "11th Commandment": Thou shalt not attack another Republican. Donald Trump spends far more time attacking Republicans than he does Democrats. He spends more time calling people RINOs simply because they know that he lost the election. He's poisoned politics in a way that I actually left the country. I had to get out for eight months; it was so awful to listen to. And we will not allow—and when I get Trump voters coming up to me saying, "What is your problem? Why are you saying this?," I have a simple question to them.

If your children, if your 10-year-old and 12-year-old came to you and talked to you with the same language that Donald Trump talks to the American people, would you tolerate it? Would you be proud of your children to use his language? And the reaction is always, "Well, of course not. Well, of course not." And that's the way we all talk to each other now. It's not just democracy. It's civility; it's decency; it's dignity. If we would not accept in our own children language that is so insulting, how the hell do we accept it or why the hell do we accept it from the president of the United States when the entire world is watching?

I ask that question to everyone watching this documentary right now, to everyone who thinks that Donald Trump has been mistreated and been maligned. Look at the language that he uses in press conferences. Look at what he says to people who dare to disagree with him. Look at how he communicates with people who sacrifice their life for him, with people who endorsed him and how he turns on them. Is this what you want from your own children? Is this what you want from your best friends? Is this what you want from your president of the United States? Is this what you want from anyone in America?

You talk about the language that Trump used, and one of the moments in our film is this tension between Republicans like Mark Sanford, Bob Corker, Jeff Flake—people who decide to confront the president—and Donald Trump does not back off them. So what's the message there that's being sent to Republicans?

I want to address two of them, and you're probably so far along that it's too late for this, but you really need to bring it up. Donald Trump attacked a Gold Star mom and dad. He actually made fun of them, criticized them publicly. Their son was a hero. He died a hero. He gave his life in sacrifice so that others may live. And Trump made fun of her and him, the mom and the dad. Is that not a disgrace? Trump made fun of a gentleman with cerebral palsy. I mean, come on! And every person who dared to challenge him for this behavior—lifelong Republicans, lifelong conservatives—he wrote them out of the party. He made fun of them; he ridiculed them; he embarrassed them, and he destroyed them. Every person who came up who challenged him, Trump sought to destroy. I remember a presentation that he gave where he actually says, "I take criticism well. I like criticism. If it's deserved, I'll listen to it; I'll respond to it." Do you know how many times he did? Never. And he destroyed the careers of some very good public servants in the process, some very principled public servants. And you know what? We all should've said to him, "Sir, you are courageous for what you are trying to do, but the way you are doing it is simply not decent. There has to be a better way."

You compliment the man for his courage to challenge the status quo, for his willingness to stand up to his critics and his eagerness to take the fight right to those who he believed are doing the people wrong. But—and this is so important—the ends do not necessarily justify the means. To destroy people and destroy a process as you're trying to fix it and reform it, and even dismantle it in some cases, you don't blow it up. You can dismantle it. So I'm saying to those people who believe that the federal government bureaucracy was in need of not just reform, not just repair, but dismantling: You can do that without destroying the people in the process.

And what's the message that's being sent to Republicans when he goes on the offense to anyone who confronts him?

Republicans learned a lesson, which is you could not go low enough; you could not attack enough. They saw Donald Trump survive everything thrown at him. They saw him survive the entire four years: survived impeachments, survived trials, survived courtroom accusations, survived everything. And I'm afraid that the lesson learned was, for some people anyway, be like Donald Trump.

I'll use a person—and I don't usually do this, but I'm going to give you one specific example. Georgia had a great senator in [David] Perdue, an amazing senator, someone who's respected by his colleagues, someone who was appreciated by the opposition, someone who did his job extremely well in a very serious fashion, still kept the feeling of voters in his heart. And David Perdue would've been reelected if Donald Trump hadn’t acted in such an irresponsible and childish way after the November election. And Perdue lost his seat because Republicans did not turn out. And then he goes and—for Donald Trump to do his bidding, Perdue runs against the governor of Georgia, who Donald Trump hated. And Perdue suddenly goes all in on Donald Trump and the way he waged his campaign and the way—what he said and what he did. He went from someone who was the respect of Georgia to an embarrassment. His result was embarrassing. He was defeated—what was it, 25 points? Something ridiculous. Thirty points? A landslide.

I've never seen a candidate in such a short time go from the belle of the ball to the turd in a s--- bowl. I don't know any other way to communicate it. And I don't believe that's who he is. And I say that because he will watch this documentary and he'll be angry, but he knows it's true. He knows how good he was, and he knows that his reputation was destroyed by Donald Trump. That's the consequence of this. He is the epitome of what Donald Trump does to people.

Now, make no mistake, and to be perfectly clear, his voters deserve more. They deserve better than this. And Trump did put more money in their pocket, and he did turn around the economy, and he did create more jobs than anyone. And the thing that's going to be lost in this documentary—and I'm going to ask you to do this, and I should record this—thanks to Donald Trump's policies, the Black unemployment was the lowest ever. The Latino unemployment was lower in 20 years. People went back to work. And the economy was already rebounding from COVID. Thanks to Donald Trump, we had the strongest economy in my lifetime, and he deserves those kudos for that. But because of Donald Trump, we have a nation so hopelessly divided, so hopelessly at odds with each other and believing more than any other time in their lifetime that we are more divided than we have ever been. And these are people who were alive during Vietnam, Kent State, Watergate, oil embargoes, everything. He was successful in the economy, and he was completely destructive in our political discourse. And both of them deserve to be analyzed, credited and held accountable for. So I'm challenging you to put both of them in this documentary, because if you don't, you're only telling part of the story.

Look at the Abraham Accords. Trump was able to fashion a foreign policy that brought Arab nations together more successfully than any other president in my lifetime. He was able to get NATO countries to pay up. He was able to actually secure the border. Something that he had promised to do, he got done, and we can see how bad it's been since he was president. He deserves credit for a lot of things that he did, but he also deserves blame for how he did it, how he spoke about it, and how he left this country after the 2020 election.

They both are part of the Trump legacy, and they are both an essential part of democracy, because democracy requires not just respect, decency and dignity; democracy actually requires a job well done. And in certain areas, Donald Trump deserves kudos, because he exceeded expectations, and all of that gets lost by people like me, who are very willing to tell you what's wrong, but we're not often enough asked what went right. And those things went right, and his administration deserves credit for them.

But you mentioned that the Republican Party is very different from the Republican Party that you grew up with. So tell me, what do you see that's different? What are people within the party telling you? Is it Trump's party now?

… In the 2012 election that nominated Mitt Romney, it was still Ronald Reagan's party, because it was still Ronald Reagan's policy; that he had governed because of not just who he was, but what he believed in. And that policy really was a part of the Republican Party long after he left office and even after he'd passed away. Donald Trump changed all that, and I think his legacy will be far shorter, because it really is about a cult of personality rather than a policy.

Now make no mistake: People came to Trump because they liked his policy on immigration. They came to Trump because they liked his policies on Washington, D.C. They came to Trump because they didn't want all of these foreign entanglements. But most importantly, they came to Donald Trump because of Donald Trump and how he communicated. So even though Ronald Reagan's Republican Party had been in existence for almost 35 years, it didn't take long for him to change the party, and now it is absolutely totally Donald Trump's party. He's the most powerful endorser. When Donald Trump supports you, when he gives you his Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, that's worth 20 points. Doesn't guarantee an election, but boy, does it change the shape of an election. And we have people today that will owe their election because of Trump's endorsements right now in this off-year election. But he was unable to save a congressman in North Carolina. He was unable to give a clear victory in the Senate race in Pennsylvania. As we do this interview, it's within 1,000 votes, and no one know who won there.

But he's responsible for elections in other states, in other constituencies, and his voice does matter. But it isn’t the party that I grew up in because it's not the voice that I grew up with. It's not a voice of humanity. It's a voice of strength; it's a voice of victory at all costs. And for a pollster whose job is to listen to the voice of the American people, that's not a voice I really particularly like hearing. There's some things more important than a single election, and that's our democratic process. If we lose our democracy, we're lost as a country, and I'm not fully convinced that we're ever going to get it back.

What does it reveal about the Republican Party, the fact that Liz Cheney was ousted from leadership because she decided to vote for impeachment the second time around?

Now, I'm sure she's part of your documentary. She used to be a hero to Republicans because she was a hardcore conservative. She took her father's no-nonsense, straightforward, courageous approach to saying no to big government, saying no to government takeover of healthcare, saying no to ignoring and making illegal immigrants citizens, just really having the guts to say no to Washington. She was a hero. And she stands up to Donald Trump, and now she's an enemy? She votes against Trump, but in every other possible way, she's toeing the Republican line. So it's weird to me because Democrats, they want to vote for her because she stood up to Trump. But every time they look at her record, they go, oh, my God, I don't want to put this person in office again.

And the truth is, she lost her job not because she voted against Donald Trump. She would've kept her job. She lost her job because she kept reminding people again and again and again and again that she voted against Donald Trump, and it made it very difficult for the Republican leadership to operate when she was constantly stoking that and constantly emphasizing that, at a time when a lot of the Republican Party was trying to move on, was trying to govern or at least provide the loyal opposition to Joe Biden. And to her, her opposition to Donald Trump was even more important. That's why she lost her job.

… Let's go back to 2016, something that we didn't get to touch upon in the beginning of this interview, which is we have the Iowa caucus. We have it between Cruz v. Trump. Cruz wins, and Trump says Cruz stole the election, that it's rigged. What message did that send?

I'm going to answer a question that's not the question you're asking, but again, I'm going to set up the context that I hope you're going to use. Because I do FRONTLINE because I don't feel you're biased. I feel that your goal is to tell the truth and to tell the whole truth. Donald Trump did not win in 2016; Hillary Clinton lost. Trump became acceptable. And the fact is, he campaigned harder than anyone I ever saw. That last week, he was going to every swing state multiple times. He was showing up early in the morning, he was showing up late at night, and Hillary Clinton was doing one or two events, if that. She ran away from the press. She ran away from the voters. She created the distance. Donald Trump held the most entertaining, enjoyable rallies that politics had seen really since George McGovern in '72 or Barry Goldwater in '64. And both those candidates lost. But Trump loved it, and he campaigned his heart out.

But the truth is, people voted based on what they thought about Hillary Clinton, not about Donald Trump. And it is so foretelling of what happened to Trump that he misinterpreted the election as his own victory rather than Hillary Clinton's defeat. And that misjudgment set the tone for the entire administration and for what happened in 2020 and beyond. And now Trump will simply say the polls are rigged and making it up. But we asked that question. Over 60% of Americans voted based on what they thought about Hillary Clinton, and less than 40% voted on what they thought about Donald Trump. Now, by 2020, that was exactly the opposite, and they were voting on Trump.

2020 was not an embrace of Joe Biden. 2020 was a rejection of Donald Trump and his behavior and his language and just who he was as a person. And that rejection hit its zenith on the day of that first debate. I was there, and we did focus groups on it, and people just said, "Oh, my God, I don't want any more of this." Trump was not the deciding factor in 2016. He most certainly was the deciding factor in 2020.

Before you go, I kind of want to round us out with just looking ahead, all right? What's at stake? How bad of a place are we in? What are the consequences of all this for our next election? Is there a lack of trust in our elections?

We asked the American people about a year ago, so it's well into 2021, what needs to be reformed the most: our economy, our legal system, our laws? A number of different options. And the No. 1 answer was democracy. Our democracy needed the greatest focus.

But here's the problem: Both Republicans and Democrats agree. Republicans believe that it's an issue of voter corruption; that people are allowed to vote that shouldn't; that votes are getting counted that are fraudulent; that we simply don't have an election system we can trust. Democrats think that it's voter suppression; that people don't have the right to vote; that we are excluding so many people from the process, and so our democracy is not fully represented. They agree on the issue, and they completely disagree on the problem. And they're unwilling to hear each other. And there isn’t a day that goes by—and I mean this explicitly—that I don't get an email or a text telling me that the elections are rigged and they can prove it, telling me that millions of voters are being denied the right to vote and that it's criminal. And they believe it.

Man, cut it out, because every text and every email just poisons the well even further. This toxicity would kill anyone, and it is killing democracy right now. And it's getting worse. And I know, as a pollster, as a moderator of focus groups of people who see the data and people who listen to Americans every single day, that we can't sit in the same room anymore and have this conversation. We can't analyze what's wrong because we want to demonize the people for being wrong. We want to say, "It's your fault." We get our news not to inform us; we collect our news to affirm us. And so everybody who watches Fox voted for Trump; everybody who watches CNN and MSNBC voted for Biden. It's over 90%. The New York Times readership is just so overwhelmingly Democratic; The Wall Street Journal is so overwhelmingly Republican. And it shouldn’t be that way. It can't be that way. There is some great person who said, "You have the right to your own opinion, but you don't have the right to your own facts," and that's true.

But if we don't have this common ground to even agree on the facts, on the things that are presented to us where there is statistical evidence, then we have lost our ability to—not just to communicate, which is my specialty, but we've lost our ability to work together side by side, roll up our shirtsleeves and actually get the job done. We can't do that anymore because we simply don't trust each other and we don't trust the system. And when you get to that point, we're f---ed as a country.

And I know that I'm going to have so many people who know my email, who know my text, and they're going to say to me, "Don't talk that way. Stop being so negative, and don't be so rude." But that is the only word to use to describe where we are right now. And if Americans don't come face to face with it and don't realize that if we don't tackle it right now, that is exactly where you're going to be, and that's exactly where we're all going to be. So yeah, the truth hurts, and the truth is ugly as hell, and the truth is rude and it's painful. But you've got to deal with it.

Where is the Republican Party now? Where do you see it?

I don't know where the Republican—no, that's not true; I do know. I don't know where the Democratic Party is right now. I know where the Republican Party is right now, and I'm not particularly happy about it. I think that we need to spend—we truly need to spend less time focused on labels and more time focused on getting things done. I think we need to spend less time focused on partisan issues and the stories of what happens behind the scenes, all the intrigue, and focus more on addressing inflation, solving healthcare, preventing COVID from ever coming back again, addressing our border, preventing crime, even tackling our challenges of Jan. 6. I don't think it matters where the Republican Party is or the Democratic Party. What matters is where our country is as people, as human beings. What matters is our inability to see the humanity and our frequent willingness and even eagerness to dehumanize each other and delegitimize each other.

What matters is finding those common threads that bind us together and asserting them, applying them to solve these problems before it becomes too late. Russia moved on Ukraine because of our weakness. I firmly believe that. I believe that Afghanistan was just a disaster because of our weakness; that China is looking at us with glee, seeking to take advantage of just how torn apart we are. So I can tell you that the Republican Party is divided, but that's not what really matters. As a pollster, what matters is how so many tens of millions of Americans have just thrown up their hands and said, "Enough!"

There's something even worse than anger, and I say this to you because I'm watching what's happened with the ratings, with the cable news ratings, and Fox is dominating. But overall, people are watching less news. They're collecting less information. They're turning it all off because they can't take it anymore. The loudest sound is silence. It's deafening. The most dangerous position is not anger; it's actually apathy and acquiescence. And that's where we are heading right now, as 100,000 people turn off their TVs every day and say, "Enough. I simply don't care." We're heading in that direction right now, and the consequences could not be worse.