- What Trump 2.0 would mean for America and American democracy.

A special episode with a student audience this week on "Firing Line".

- For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution, I am your retribution.

- [Margaret] Republicans today remain split, though unevenly, on their support for Donald Trump.

- And I support him because Joe Biden's a disaster.

- I'm not gonna support Donald Duck Trump for president.

- [Interviewer] Under any circumstances?

- No.

- You would still vote for Trump under that circumstance?

- I would.

Yeah, because Biden is awful.

- The issue this election cycle is making sure the Putin wing of the Republican Party does not take over the West Wing of the White House.

- [Margaret] "Firing Line" has come to Hofstra University to delve into the implications of another Trump presidency with two conservative guests, both co-authors of public policy papers holding contrasting perspectives.

Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, says a Trump win would bring forth a revival of effective conservative policies.

- The Trump years, we had a great economy, very low inflation, we had a tax cut that worked.

- [Margaret] Amanda Carpenter, a former aide to senator Ted Cruz, argues that Trump poses an existential threat to American democracy.

- The way that he has changed the Republican party to have a broad, unconstrained view of power that puts Donald Trump above the law, is really what worries me long term.

- [Margaret] A special forum at Hofstra University, this week on "Firing Line".

- [Announcer] "Firing Line" with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, The Fairweather Foundation, The Tepper Foundation, Peter and Mary Kalikow, The Asness Family Foundation, The Beth and Ravenel Curry Foundation, The McKenna Family Foundation, Charles R Schwab, and by The Pritzker Military Foundation on behalf of the Pritzker Military Museum and Library, The Rosalyn P Walter Foundation, Damon Button, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Roger and Susan Hertog, Cheryl Cohen Effron and Blair Effron, Al and Kathy Hubbard.

Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc and by Pfizer Inc. - Amanda Carpenter, Mike Gonzalez, welcome to "Firing Line".

We're here at Hofstra University in front of a studio audience of students.

[audience applauding and cheering] And we're here to discuss what a second term with Donald Trump as president could mean to American democracy and the American conservative movement.

You both have a history in Republican politics.

Amanda, you previously worked for Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, who at one time was also the president of the Heritage Foundation, a nonpartisan, conservative think tank that you, Mike Gonzalez, work for now.

You're both former journalists.

Mike, you worked in George W Bush's administration.

Today you find yourselves on different sides of the question about what former President Trump has done both to the country and to the GOP.

For both of you, I'd like to know, has Donald Trump changed the Republican party for better or for worse?

Mike?

- Yes, it's changed it, I think for the better.

But first I should say that I'm speaking in my own capacity that I'm not speaking for Heritage, nor for the "Washington Examiner", for which I'm a weekly columnist, nor for "Encounter", my publisher, not even for the Gonzalez family, all five of us have different views, I'm here speaking my mind.

- Yeah.

- Obviously, this is a very different party today than it was 10 years ago.

It's more attuned to the demands, the angsts, the worries of the people.

There's a long answer to this of the Democratic party, of the left in general, abandoning the working class, and now the chickens have come home to roost.

And the people, the everyday Americans, they have worries and wants that are different from those of the east, the northeastern elite, the coastal elites and I think Donald Trump has changed the Republican party to be more responsive to that.

- Amanda, has Donald Trump changed the Republican party for the better or for worse?

- I mean, from my point of view, there's no question he's changed it for the worse.

And even just looking at the plain politics of the lack of success the Republican Party has had, I mean, he won by a very slim margin in 2016, losses in 2018 midterms, loss in 2020 and losses in the '22 midterms.

But I don't like to just focus on the politics because I don't believe you should just do what will lead you to win.

The way that he has changed the Republican party to have a broad, unconstrained view of power that puts Donald Trump above the law is really what worries me long term.

The way I see the 2024 election, this really isn't a question of Donald Trump versus Joe Biden.

It's a question that we have really grappled with throughout Donald Trump's presidency of how we hold the President accountable.

The second term with Donald Trump, it won't be like the first term because he knows how to use the levers of power the second time.

The things that he is promising on the campaign trail saying, I will investigate my enemies.

I will go after people I don't like.

He has an apparatus around him where they've thought about how to make his rhetoric into a reality.

The second time it will happen, because he's committed to surrounding himself with loyalists who are committed to him and not the fundamental principles of the rule of law.

- 74 million people voted for Donald Trump in 2020.

When they voted for him last time, January 6th hadn't happened, there hadn't been violence in capital, so I think the question Republicans who voted for him last time will be asking themselves is, I might be uncomfortable with Trump, but is he still better than Biden?

And this is what I wanna get at.

Let me play this video for you first, take a look.

- We will treat those people from January 6th fairly.

We will treat them fairly.

And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons.

I am your warrior.

I am your justice.

And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.

I am your retribution.

Not gonna let this stop.

We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.

He says, you're not gonna be a dictator, are you?

I said, nope, no, no, other than day one.

- Mike, how will you persuade Republicans who have some hesitations about Donald Trump, especially in response to some of the clips that they've heard, to support him?

- Well, it's not my job to do that.

I'm not here to defend either the candidate nor his personality, nor the fact that he's more personal than I would like or none of that.

I'm here discussing his policies and I think you touched on a good point.

It's Trump versus Biden.

And I think you have to look at what a Trump 2.0 and Biden 2.0 would be.

And we have to be frank with each other, we have a government report that now says that the president has diminished faculties.

Recently ABC News had a poll, you know how many people think he's too old to run for president?

86%.

- But let's stick with the policy.

- No, no, right.

Okay, fine.

I'm very happy to do that.

The policies have been awful.

The policies, the border has been opened.

The foreign policy, the world is on fire.

We have two hot wars.

One about to maybe start between China and Taiwan.

Domestic policy was also very bad.

We have inflation such as we haven't had in decades.

And look at the Trump years.

The Trump years, whatever his rhetoric was, we had a great economy, very low inflation, we had a tax cut that worked, we had peace in the world.

Americans were not under threat.

I think that on the basis of this, we can discuss the policies of Trump in the first three years and the policies of Biden in the first three years and I think that's a very easy debate to have.

- Okay.

Amanda, you work for an organization called Protect Democracy, which has recently published a paper called, "The Authoritarian Playbook 2025".

And it details how specifically a second Trump administration could dismantle democracy.

Many on the right have dismissed this as alarmism.

Why are you so concerned that a second Trump term would be different than the first?

- Sure.

Let's start with the idea, because this is a popular one you come across a lot, that you can separate Donald Trump's rhetoric and have a debate about the policies.

And I sort of reject that out hand because what Donald Trump is proposing is remaking the government in a different way so that you can't have a legitimate policy debate, I mean, we're not talking about policy preferences.

When Donald Trump says, "I have the Article 2 power to do whatever I want", you are talking about a different view of executive power.

So you look at his other promises that you pointed out in that video reel where he's talking about giving pardons to January 6th rioters.

This is one big red flag area.

If he is elected president and does that, that effectively amounts to a license for political violence that he approves of.

And so who's gonna stop him?

We keep saying there's this other popular idea that the institutions are strong enough to hold President Trump.

Well, not if Congress won't hold him accountable, not if he doesn't respect judicial rulings.

Like he didn't respect any of the judicial rulings that said there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

He continues to promote the lie that the election was stolen.

And so I ask, what will constrain him in a second Trump term if none of those guardrails are present?

And let me tell you what, this is the authoritarian end game.

This is what happens in all authoritarian regimes.

They consolidate all this executive power.

And then guess what?

You can't give it up because if your political adversaries ever get it, they might hold you accountable and then they stay in power and they never get out.

- Mike, you're of Cuban descent.

You have spent much of your career actually focused on authoritarianism abroad.

You are one of the authors of the "Mandate for Leadership 2025", this 900-page guidebook that articulates the policies of a next conservative president.

Now, I should say the Heritage Foundation is a nonprofit, conservative think tank and will not be endorsing any candidate in the presidential race.

- Right.

These are political ideas that we would love for President Biden to take up, for any president, the next president, this president, to take up.

- And you do it every four years?

- [Mike] Yeah.

- "Mandate for Leadership" delineates many areas of the federal government that would be overhauled and reformed in a second Trump administration.

Why do you believe such dramatic action is needed?

- We need to return power to the people.

There is no fourth branch of government in the Constitution.

Right now, we have a permanent bureaucracy that is 2.4 million strong.

People who are in the permanent bureaucracy should not be in policymaking.

So I am very strongly, very strongly of the belief that we have to get that under control.

That is not authoritarian, Amanda.

And it's very rich for that side to say we're standing up for democracy, the weaponization of DOJ.

You talk about political violence, where were you in all of 2020?

We had political violence for months.

We had 12,000 demonstrations.

- [Margaret] You're referring to the summer.

- The BLM riots of 2020.

- Black Lives Matter, the summer of 2020 where George Floyd was murdered.

- Right.

That was really political.

That was more of an insurrection.

I don't, in the years, that Trump.

- Were they overthrowing the federal government with violent action because when I look at January 6th, I see concentrated action to stop the peaceful transfer of power and deny Biden's presidency.

- I'm gonna take control of this because I actually don't think, I don't wanna compare this to BLM.

Here's what I wanna talk about.

I wanna talk about is a second Trump administration going to be a reinvigoration of American conservatism and an opportunity to really install policies that can help define a new generation of conservatives?

Or is it going to undermine the institutions of our democracy?

So I wanna stay on a couple of just examples.

Amanda, you write about how Trump plans to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to remove non-citizens in mass without due process.

Why is this of concern if he returns to office?

- Well, foundationally, it's a concern because you're invoking warlike measures to exercise what is within the purview of federal and congressional immigration policy.

And so why are we going to warlike measures rather than working with the existing structures?

But first, I just like wanna rewind the tape back just a little bit because the thing that underscores Donald Trump's new ethos for a second Trump term is the idea that he was stopped by the deep state, sabotaged by the deep state in his first term.

And I actually don't think that's true.

If you look at the big areas where his policies were stopped, they were by high ranking conservative officials of his own appointment.

I mean, if you wanna talk about immigration policy, he went to his advisors and said things like, "Well, can't we just shoot them"?

And his advisor says, "No, you can't, sir".

They opposed him on that policy because not only was it just morally wrong to do, but it's outside the law.

- Right.

- And so now going to a second Trump administration, they have people developing a framework so that you can do things like sweep people up using these war-like measures.

They talk about how immigration is now an invasion at the border, that is all being used to trigger these Alien Enemies Act so that they can take these military-like operations, which I think is not something that is within unilateral executive power.

- Mike, how do you respond to Amanda's concerns of overreach by federal law enforcement with respect to deportations and immigration?

- Between 8 million and 10 million people, we don't know how many have come in, in the past three years.

The border is open.

People are being paroled.

And even Alejandro Mayorkas has said that 85% of people who come in, and that's for asylum, are allowed in.

We don't know what we're gonna do with a population that has come in.

- [Margaret] But with respect to his concern.

- 10 million people is bigger than 35 states.

- No, no, no.

There's no question there is a crisis on the border.

This program has covered it.

You have talked about it, you have both talked about it, we all agree there's a crisis on the border.

But in terms of how to use the power of the executive to combat that crisis of the border, how do you respond to accusations that Trump would push the limits of executive power in order to deal with the border crisis?

- I think the first thing he would do is close the border the way he did during his administration.

I think that the border will go back to what we had, hopefully, and then we have to, what do we do with that population of 10 million people who have come in, who have been paroled in?

The definition of parole has been expanded, it was very limited.

And then it was expanded enormously by the Biden administration to the point that we have eight or 10 million people who have come in.

- I absolutely grant you that.

Amanda, do you understand the point he's making about the expansion of humanitarian parole in a way that hasn't actually reflected congressional action?

You understand the argument?

- And I think it would be wonderful if Congress actually did assert itself and start making some border policy.

I mean, there was a deal on the table now, which I think was actually possibility for a big conservative victory.

So you would've gotta shut down at the border if exceeded a certain cap.

And so, but this is where.

- 5,000.

- 5,000.

But then this is where it gets into trouble.

We're always looking to the president to just do everything.

And I think a lot of Republicans and Congress stood down because they have this idea that if we just let Trump, we're just gonna give him all the power, we're gonna let him do everything.

- Actually what happened is conservatives negotiated this bill and then Donald Trump said he wasn't for it and it lapsed in 24 hours.

- Well, Republicans say.

- But hold on guys, I wanna actually, we're going in circles here.

Mike, I just wanna give you one more chance to respond to President Trump's rhetoric about the overreach of the executive branch when it comes to dealing with the immigration crisis in a second administration.

- But that didn't happen in the first administration.

- So you're saying, because it didn't happen in the first administration.

- [Mike] It didn't happen in the first one.

- [Margaret] Okay.

- We had a border that was not hermetically closed, but was reasonably closed.

We didn't have the chaos we have today.

- But how do you respond to the concerns he has raised about using federal forces to implement these mass deportations?

- I don't know what they're going to do, but we have a big problem.

Let's go back to closing the border the way Trump did during his four years in office.

We had a border that was.

- But are you confident he will do it completely legally within his executive authority, legal executive authority?

- Well, that's the way he did it in his first four years.

- But I haven't heard you respond to the concern Amanda has raised.

Is it just 'cause you don't have a concern?

- We have crisis of a.

- But does that justify extra legal actions?

- I'm not sure that I, to be honest, I don't know what he's promised to do, but I know that what we have right now is a chaotic border.

This is a big crisis for the Biden administration and they're realizing it, finally.

- All of that is true.

I think the question still is about whether Trump will be true to his word and implement the largest mass deportation operation in history using arcane laws from the founding of the country to remove non-citizens in mass without due process.

I'm not sure that we got to a place of understanding on that, but I wanna move on to the Department of Justice.

"Project 2025" calls for reexamining the norms that since Watergate, have really surrounded the interaction between the White House and the Justice Department.

Amanda, why is the Heritage Foundation's vision for the DOJs new relationship with the White House troublesome to you?

- Well, I would say since the post-Nixon era, there has been this idea that the Department of Justice should operate with some degree of independence.

And there is growing conservative thought on the Trump-supporting side that this isn't true.

We don't need independent agencies.

And when you see Donald Trump, he is constantly threatening investigations into his enemies, media outlets, journalists, accusing people who worked for him that happened to oppose him of things like treason.

And so in the past, if you look at what happened in the 2020 election, there was that huge standoff at the Department of Justice in December, 2020 when he was leaning on prosecutors to say, go investigate these conspiracy theories about election fraud.

This is another case where he was constrained by conservative lawyers in the Justice Department.

They said, "No, there's nothing to investigate here.

We're not going to do this."

They threatened to resign en mass, his handpicked Attorney General Bill Barr quit.

So this is another case where this wasn't the deep state sabotaging Donald Trump, these were people committed to the rule of law who wouldn't do his dirty work.

And so in the second Trump administration, a bunch of people have gotten together and say, well, how do we eliminate that?

How do we find people who will go along who are okay with the idea of a president interfering in political investigation?

And you see him every time he makes a speech essentially saying, this is what I'm going to do.

I believe him.

I don't dismiss that rhetoric.

- Mike, can you respond to Amanda's point about the fact that the real resistance in Trump's first term wasn't from a deep state so much as from prominent conservatives in prominent positions in his own administration who drew the line and said, "No".

Like Bill Barr, the Attorney General, like Mike Pence, the Vice President?

- I think that the real resistance did not come from them.

I would question that.

I think it came from the bureaucracy and it's not their place to question.

- [Margaret] Can you give me an example or two?

- Well, I mean the first impeachment came from Vindman was a career official, he was not a political appointee.

We have to get career officials out of the policy making power.

We need technical advice, we need scientific advice, but we cannot have a bureaucracy which is making policy.

- Can I just ask a question about that?

The policy was actually made by the Congress who had allocated the funds to Ukraine, but this isn't about a national security staffer, and this was about the President of the United States redirecting congressionally appropriated funds to Ukraine.

So why is that about the deep state?

- Well, I would like to see the executive not as powerful.

I'd think I'd like to see the legislature have more power than it has right now.

- Do you have another example of where the deep state thwarted Donald Trump rather than prominent conservatives in his administration, as Amanda suggested?

- Yeah.

I mean, let me think about it.

But there are many, many, many, many instances where the real push came from the deep state from the permanent.

- I understand you're saying that, and you're gonna think of another example for me.

In the meantime, I wanna move on.

In 1974, on the original "Firing Line", William F Buckley Jr invited his brother, then-Senator James Buckley, to discuss the future of American conservatism in the aftermath of President Nixon's resignation.

Take a look.

- First of all, I would say that the Watergate episode and others leading up to it, in very real senses, I think, illustrate the fundamental conservative principle.

And that is, if you concentrate enough power, especially discretionary or arbitrary power in any one place, at some point or another, it's going to be abused.

And of course, this has been happening over the years.

- Quick reaction, Amanda.

- The thing that makes me sad that's happening in the Republican party now is that I don't think they've learned the lessons of how abuse of power, conspiratorial thinking, weaponizing Department of Justice and things like that, A, as we started the conversation, led to disastrous results, but just was a stain on the Republican party for so long that had to be reclaimed.

And finally we got to those places and now it seems like we wanna go back and make the same mistakes.

- Okay, I'd like to take some student questions now.

Please introduce yourself and tell us your question.

- My name's Julian Rocha, I'm a senior, majoring in geography and global studies here at Hofstra.

And my question is, if Donald Trump were to lose the election or be disqualified for any reason, do you think the future of the Republican Party lies with his proteges such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, or with more, I guess, independent Republicans such as Glenn Youngkin?

- I mean, I wish it were with someone like a Brian Kemp or a Larry Hogan and Nikki Haley.

I would love to see her be the first female president, but sadly, I don't think that's the case.

- Mike, Amanda gave some examples of people that she would like to see lead the Republican party in a post-Trump era.

Who do you like?

- There's many.

I agree with some of the names you mentioned, Amanda.

I like DeSantis.

I think that Tim Scott is a prominent Republican.

- Who do you think leads the party in a post, after Trump?

- Well, I don't know that.

We're talking about four years from now, that's an impossible question to answer.

- Let's go to another student.

- I am Alex Webb, I am a junior journalism student here at Hofstra.

And my question for you is, do you think these polarized politics as they exist today are something that's going to last in a post-Trump America?

- It's true that the two sides are like this.

They used to be like this.

The most left wing Republican was to the left of the most conservative Democrat.

That's no longer the case, they're like this now, there's no Venn diagram.

And that is a fact.

I don't know how we get back this, I think conservatives are ready, if they ever get power back to take back the culture to the things that have become norms that should not have been norms 10 years ago, that have been become norms over the last 10 years.

I think there's, so I think we're gonna remain polarized.

I'm sorry.

- You're not hopeful.

- Yeah, I'm not hopeful.

And I don't think that we should be at a Kumbaya moment right now.

I think that we need to solve some issues about where the country should go.

- Amanda.

- I mean, I guess, to be honest with you, Margaret, I have a hard time envisioning what a post-Trump Republican party looks like.

I've pretty committed conservative, I'm not welcome.

No one is asking for my vote when I talk about how we need to limit executive power.

What they say to conservatives like me, what Donald Trump says to someone like Nikki Haley, you are barred, get out.

Okay, I guess we'll go.

- That's not what I say to you, Amanda.

- No, you don't.

- Okay - I know.

You wanna run for president?

- We feel the love.

And this is where we actually do have the ability to model having civil discourse and believing that that is our civic responsibility.

Mike Gonzalez, Amanda Carpenter, thank you very much for coming here to discuss your vision and your interpretation of what a Trump 2.0 administration would look like.

And to the students of Hofstra University, thank you for joining us.

[audience applauding] - [Announcer] "Firing Line" with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, The Fairweather Foundation, The Tepper Foundation, Peter and Mary Kalikow, The Asness Family Foundation, The Beth and Ravenel Curry Foundation, The McKenna Family Foundation, Charles R Schwab, and by The Pritzker Military Foundation on behalf of The Pritzker Military Museum and Library, The Roslyn P Walter Foundation, Damon Button, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Roger and Susan Hertog, Cheryl Cohen Effron and Blair Effron, Al and Kathy Hubbard.

Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc and by Pfizer Inc. [bright upbeat music] [bright upbeat music continues] [bright upbeat music continues] [bright upbeat music continues] [bright upbeat tones] [bright music] - [Announcer] You're watching PBS.