TOP
Brooke Rollins
Chapters
The FRONTLINE Interviews
Brooke Rollins
White House Policy Adviser
Brooke Rollins served as acting director of the Domestic Policy Council and assistant to the president for strategic initiatives in the first Trump administration. She then served as president and CEO of the America First Policy Institute. Rollins has been nominated by Donald Trump to serve as the secretary of Agriculture.
The following interview was conducted by the Kirk Documentary Group’s Michael Kirk for FRONTLINE on November 20, 2024. It has been edited for clarity and length.
This interview appears in:
Text Interview:
Highlight text to share it
Living in the Trump Era
Let’s just start in a kind of general way.How remarkable was it that this guy who’s been impeached twice, … convicted, whatever it was, what does it say about him that he won?
I think that the victory was a miracle.I think that we’re living in the middle of a miracle.I think the fact that he survived two assassination attempts, plus indicted, home raided.It’s just one thing after another.What’s really interesting, though, is for me, I think back to a call.He called me the day he was indicted for the first time.And forgive me, I can’t remember the exact cadence in which of the four or five cases it was, but it was the first one.
And he called me.He said, “Well, what do you think?”And I said, “Mr. President, I think you just won reelection.”I sincerely believed that—and this was what, two and a half, three years ago.I sincerely believed that, and having known him so well, having worked for him for three years in the last White House, having built the policy organization, the America First Policy Institute, that was based on his first term and the policies there, with my long background in public policy and building teams and efforts and movements, first in Texas and then in the last White House and beyond, I just had a very deep feeling that the American people would see it for what it was, which was an unfair application of justice.
And while not every American could truly understand how or why or could explain it on TV, that they just knew intrinsically something was wrong.And they saw in him a fighter.And so that was years ago when that first indictment came down.So I, even having lived through all of it and the various competitors he had in this primary, good people, good people, good conservatives, I just knew it wasn’t their time.I just believed sincerely it was his time and that the American people would speak and that he would have the opportunity—I call it the “great pause,” which is what we’ve been in the last four years—that he would have the opportunity to step back in and finish the job.
What does it say about him?
I think that even those who don’t love him and don’t like him and didn’t want him to be president again, I think even they would recognize that the strength and the courage and the willingness to run into the battle over and over and over and over again is unlike anything we’ve seen in modern American politics.It reminds me, frankly, of 1776.I always like to go back 10 years, 1766, when George Washington was a businessman, a young businessman but very successful.But he’d had some hard years.He’d written in his journal that year that he was in debt, and he didn’t know if he’d ever get back out of it, his crops hadn’t done great, but that he was never going to give up.
James Madison was a teenager 10 years before 1776.His parents wrote in their journal that he was so shy, they didn’t know if he would ever amount to anything.Thomas Jefferson I think was either 19 or 20 years old—the math may not be perfect but I think it’s close—and he was a teacher and an academic.But you know those Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, others, they 10 years later were called to meet their moment.I think in perhaps a similar miracle, these kind of average, ordinary men with huge hearts and a lot of bravery and courage were willing to stand up and do what they thought was right.And I believe sincerely that President Trump is in that same ilk as those men.
People talk about the Reagan era, the Obama era.Are we living in the Trump era?
I think not only are we living in the Trump era.I think that in 200 years, 250 years when we are hitting our 500-year mark as a country, I think that a lot of the other eras will have faded.I think this one will be part of American lore in history for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, similar to FDR in the 1920s [sic], 1930s, similar to Abraham Lincoln in the 1860s.I think it is even similar to, obviously, the founding of our country, but even the election of 1800, where you had a real battle of a strong federal government versus states’ rights with the Jefferson race.
And I think people will mark this time in a similar way, an inflection point in our country’s history and how we align and what we believe in.And I do believe that in hundreds of years from now, I don’t know that the Obama era will necessarily be marked.I love Ronald Reagan.Obviously for any of us that are conservatives, he’s been kind of the guide-on for many, many decades, but I don’t even know that the Reagan era will pop its head up in 250 years from now.But I believe the Trump era will forever in American history.
How Trump Faces Adversity
You talked about the adversity that Washington and others faced, and certainly God knows Donald Trump has faced it in his life—scandals, bankruptcies, all the stuff, the convictions, the everything—and we’re deep inside his biography, so we didn’t know everything that’s happened to him along the way.And there is something about him, and it starts back with his dad, “You can’t be a loser; you’ve got to be a winner; you’ve got to do everything you can to be winner.”Do you know Trump well enough to know that he remembers things that his dad said to him and that he lives with his father, and in some cases maybe even his mother, in his mind’s eye as he’s doing what you say are such historic things?
I believe that he is a man to meet this moment.And I think that no matter who you are, your parents and—your family is a huge part of that.It’s really interesting for me personally.I worked right next to him for three years in the last White House.I’m an ag girl from Texas.I grew up in a town of 1,200 people.I studied agriculture at Texas A&M.… But coming from very different backgrounds compared to President Trump—he's from the city.He grew up in a well-heeled family.Even though they worked for everything they had, they were hustlers in the best way.But I would say that growing up in seemingly in such a different environment, there is something that is inexplicable and that is intrinsic to men and women like President Trump that just have that fighting spirit.
And I realize that some people really don’t appreciate that, but that is what has taken him to this point I think in his life.You think about, he’s got to be one of the only politicians in history that left office with a whole lot less money and wealth than when he entered office, right?Most people—and I’m not casting aspersions at the Democrats, only the Democrats; this is true of almost everybody in political life, in elected office, right, that they enter, and then they become much wealthier while they’re in office.But with President Trump, it’s exactly the opposite.
So what I will say is he and I have never had a conversation about his father’s or his mother’s impact on him, so I certainly don’t want to speak out of turn.But just knowing who he is and how much grit and hustle he has, that I think a lot of that is natural for him, but I also think there’s no doubt that being a product of an upbringing with extremely high expectations and never having the opportunity—if you fail, you just get right back up, and you just keep on going.
And that’s very American.That’s very American dream.And I think it’s made him an icon in many ways to the average American.And it’s interesting to hear, when people say he has brought blue-collar workers back into the conservative tent—African American men and women and Hispanic leaders and those without a high school degree and those without a college degree, and how interesting that a real estate billionaire with a gold-plated penthouse in New York City—and I’ve been there, and there is a lot of gold; it is something else; it’s pretty spectacular—that he is the person of this moment that has made that connection to so many millions of our American citizens that could never even dream of flying on a personal private jet or having an army of cars or golf courses or hotels or homes at your disposal, would never even dream of that, but they feel a connection with him because I think they feel that hustle and that American spirit that is so embedded in him.
When he loses—I know he disputes that he lost to Biden, but let’s just say for argument’s sake, when he lost to Biden in 2020, he goes to Mar-a-Lago, leaves Washington.I don’t suppose you were with him when he left.
I was with him the night before.I walked out of the West Wing at midnight the night before he left the next morning.But then I talked to him the next afternoon, so we were in very close touch.
Tell me a little bit what it was like to leave.Was it like leaving a high school for the last time, or was it something else?
It was sad. It was sad.For me, personally I knew in his heart he knew the job was not done, and we had worked really hard.Again, I was there year two, year three and year four.But until COVID hit, he had the lowest poverty rates, the highest employment rates, the border more secure than it had been in decades, no new wars, energy prices at a remarkable—gas prices at a remarkable number, inflation under control.It was a couple of years of, I believe, some incredible achievements that the American people really felt.And listen, I was raised by a single mom.We had nothing.I went to college on scholarship.I could really, really connect with the people that believed for the first time they were living the American dream under Trump, first term.
And I had spent the fourth year of that term, one, really focusing on—everyone else was managing COVID and government shutdowns and impeachments, and I was helping on all that, too, but for me personally, I wanted to have a second term that he didn’t really have the first time around because he was so new to all of it.He hadn’t quite gotten the right team around him yet.And we’d really begun to hit, I believe, our stride middle of year two, year three, and then year four.Even during COVID, I think we were able to do some good things.
But I had spent most of that fourth year mapping out his second-term agenda, and we called it “Vision 2025.”If we were fortunate enough to be there for second term, here is what we would continue to do.It was 10 basic pillars: the economy, health care, education, “peace through strength” foreign policy, innovation, the work to the stars and beyond Space Force, etc.There had been so much invested by our team, by him, by others to have a chance to continue to execute on what we believe to be a transformative policy agenda that was creating a movement in a bigger tent of people that had never given our side really a shot before, but could really feel it and see what our policies would do to lift everyone to a shot at the American dream.
And so those last few weeks, they were tough. They were tough.And we were living in those days and those weeks, is there a chance of turning it around?The president, and to this day, still feels very strongly, and I think there’s evidence for that, that that election was taken from him, whether it was using COVID to bend some rule, whatever reason, that in a different time and place that he would have won; he should have won.1And so that was happening.
And then Jan. 6 happened, and so even darker days descended, I believe.But I don't know.I just felt so strongly that those four years were an important marker for freedom and less government and more opportunity.And when I walked out of the White House for the last time—and again, the midnight, the night before President Biden was inaugurated, and about 10 hours before the president and Mrs. Trump left for the last time, in that moment, that’s when I believed so strongly that we had to double down, and it was about taking those four years of America First policy—and I’m a policy person at heart, not political—but we take the policy agenda and that we build an entire movement around it so that whenever the next America First conservative president took the White House—I will say when I walked out of the White House for the last time in the early, mid-January of 2021, I wasn’t fully expecting President Trump to step back into the political arena immediately.But for me it was more about who is going to step in and how do we ensure that the lessons learned and what we did in that first term, how that becomes an important part of whoever does have the next White House that believes and is aligned policy-wise with us.
So launching the America First Policy Institute, bringing alongside me nine former Trump Cabinet members, almost 50 former Trump White House and administration senior officials so that we could build the team and have the plan ready, even more so than what I had done in the White House.And let me pivot.Obviously, this interview is not about me, but just making sure that your viewers understand that the policy and the infrastructure that has been built around the America First movement with Donald Trump as the leader and now as the incoming 47th president, that was a tremendous amount of effort and organization in the last few years to prepare for this moment.
But it was—in a way it was about President Trump.It was about his legacy, preserving what we had achieved, ensuring the American people understood how important it was.But it was also about a 100-year plan that ultimately for us to, in our opinion, save America and adhere to the Constitution and ensure that we could get back to secure borders and peace through strength and no new wars and lowering the burden on working Americans in terms of their taxes and regulations, that we could have a plan that was ready at the federal government for the White House, but also working through the states as well.
So it wasn’t our time, to circle back to your question.It wasn’t our time. There is no doubt.But it was also, sometimes, in the darkest time, in the darkest hours, that’s when you have a real clarity of judgment and the path forward.And so for me, that’s what that time meant.It was heartbreaking, but it was also a time to step more deeply and intentionally into conviction and policy and what we believed and build for the future.
Trump After the 2020 Election Loss
And for him, what do you think it was?He goes to Mar-a-Lago.People say it was a little bit like Napoleon going to Elba, just there to not only lick his wounds but plan.What was it for him, do you think, in those darkest days?Can you imagine him, with his personality, what he was like and what he was doing for days and weeks right before something I’m going to ask you about next, which is the raid.
You know, every time I saw it, again and again, every time he would get punched, whether that was leaving the White House four years too early, whether that was the incessant negative media and circling around him, whether that was the threat, and certainly we saw eventually the culmination of trying to throw him in jail, whatever it was, it was unbelievable; it made him stronger.And I know you hear that from people that know and love him but I witnessed it firsthand.Those last few weeks in the White House I worked with a couple of our other senior team on what his library could potentially look like and be, right?
Again, it was so important to me personally.I know him.He gave me an—again, a small-town Texas girl, he gave me an unbelievable opportunity to run his policy shop.I didn’t know him before I joined him in the White House.I had been on a couple of his, when he was the candidate, a couple of his economic teams, building out for him before he won and beat Hillary Clinton and before he took the White House but what his policies could look like—similar to what we had done in Texas, which is how they kind of found me.
It was, “Wait a minute.You guys cut taxes and limited government and deregulated and your poverty rates were cut in half.How did you do that?What did you do?”So that’s how I sort of got involved to begin with.But then getting to know him, as a man, I just thought, we’ve got to figure out what his legacy will look like, and in the days of Nov. 3, 2020, and then Jan. 6, so we would go to him and say, “Well, here’s what our thoughts are for a library in South Florida.”
You know, he’s such a showman.There was lots of gold and lights and very Trumpian.And it was interesting, because he didn’t really ever want to talk about it.And I was sort of a little surprised by that, because I thought, this he’s going to really put his arms around and really want to get into.He’s so interested in how the story is being told and if it’s told correctly and if it’s done in a beautiful way.And it’s all just really important to him.But he just—he never really leaned in, and so we kind of filed the library away.
And I thought, you know, when he’s ready to talk about it in a few weeks or a month or so, then I’ve got it; it’s right here in the file.And never once did he bring it back up, never once.And I believe it’s because he knew that he was being called to stay in the arena no matter how hard he was getting hit, no matter how many pieces of litigation were flying at him or bullets or whatever, that he was in this, and he was going to go to the very end and give it everything he had.
What was he doing behind the scenes that would be part of his comeback story?
I think that he was watching.And a lot of people that don’t know him well automatically assume that, based on what they see, which again, is a fighter; he holds nothing back; he is not politically correct, right?He’ll say things that I think some people are like, “Oh, my goodness.”But the people love—they may not love everything he says, but they love that he is not a typical politician who is triple-thinking everything he says.And so I think he went back to Mar-a-Lago, and there were a handful of us that were still talking to him very regularly.For me, I was talking to him quite a bit about building this new organization, the America First Policy Institute.I wanted to make sure it honored his vision and his policy, and he agreed with the different people we were putting in place.I was actually in fairly regular contact with him in those first few months of 2021.
Was he different in those conversations than he was as president? Was there a kind of burden on him?
You know what’s interesting? He is the same person all the time.I mean, he maybe was in a little bit of a bad mood late 2020, early 2021 because of what he believed had been taken unfairly, which was the White House, being castigated as an insurrectionist.But honestly, I’ve never in my entire life—we all aspire to be this, right?We all aspire to be a person that, whether the cameras are on or off, whether we’re at Sunday school or not, whether we are leading a group of Girl Scouts or not, whether we’re out with our friends on a Friday night or at a college football game, I think we all aspire to be genuine and to be who we are all the time, and to not change based on who’s in the audience.
I have never known anyone who reaches that and achieves it more than Donald Trump, ever.He is literally the same person all the time.
What’s that about?
It’s incredible.I just think it’s that he knows—he’s so sure of who he is, of what he has been called to do, that no matter who says what about him, no matter who his enemies are, no matter what the media says, no matter how many times you try to get him into court, to bankrupt him, no matter any of that, he is truly the same person.And so I think in those dark days that he was in a place where he just couldn’t believe his country could do this, and he knew and felt sure, as a lot of us did, that the Biden-Harris administration would unwind so much of what we had worked to do and achieve, and what we needed to do to push back on that and to be ready if another opportunity came.
Called to Be President
You’ve said it a couple of times that he was “called.” Who’s calling?Who called him to this?
I believe that it’s a calling from God. I really do.I believe that this is a story as old as Scripture; that sometimes the most unusual characters—characters meaning men and women, characters in the Bible, though, as an example—are called for certain times.Paul, who built Jesus’s church, Paul originally was Saul who was killing Christians before he was called to become Paul and then become basically the main purveyor of the message of Jesus in spreading the church all across the world.2He was shipwrecked; he was beaten; he was jailed.He was di-da, di-da, di-da.And yet biblically, he was the one who was called by God for a time such as that.
2
Britannica: St. Paul the Apostle
And obviously, some of your viewers may laugh at this.“Is she really comparing Donald Trump to St. Paul?”But for me, I think that in a lot of ways that we’re all born with a certain goal in our heart, and everyone has a different life’s calling and a different path.But for President Trump, I just—I believe he’s been called for a time such as this.I think that God has had his hand on his shoulder.I think that that bullet that missed his brain by one millimeter, I think there were angels that day.I just really believe he was called for a time such as this.
And for those of us that believe so strongly in the Judeo-Christian foundation of America and the idea of self-governance, which is a biblical foundation—self-governance.You’re not governed by an elite, a monarch, a dictator.You are governed by yourself and the people.I see a path there that I believe he has been called to take.
You’re not the first person who’s told us this.We had Pastor Paula [White] on a film we made, and she said basically the same thing.How much influence do you think she has, Pastor Paula has on Trump’s inner psyche?
Yeah. I love Pastor Paula.She’s been a part of my team in the White House and even in the America First Policy Institute.I think quite a bit.I think that their story is remarkable.He saw her.She was a very successful television pastor in South Florida for decades, and he saw her on TV at Mar-a-Lago one Christmas, I think maybe 20, 25 years ago, and called her up, and the rest is history.I think she held the Bible when she was sworn in the first time.It’s a pretty remarkable story.And Paula’s young.She’s in her early 50s like I am.And they’ve been a—she’s kind of been guiding on the spiritual front for a long time.
Trump’s Working Relationship with Women
It’s interesting to me that Trump—this is a slight aside, but here we are.Trump had two or three women around him at the Trump Organization who we’ve interviewed before.Louise Sunshine, a couple of others, Barbara Res.He seems to have, and get along with, and retain women: Pastor Paula, you, Kellyanne [Conway], a slightly different case, because she came with a different set of baggage, I think, too.So we’ll leave her out of the analogy.Anyway, what the heck is that all about?
Well, I would put Kellyanne right in the middle of that, actually, too.
OK.
It’s so funny when I hear people say he’s a misogynist or sexist or he’s—in my three years next to him, every single day, every day, and then in the four years since, never was there an inappropriate comment, a disrespectful mood.I just believed that—I think this is true for men or women, but he is drawn to highly motivated, very energetic, really good multitaskers and loyalty.You could argue that those characteristics often are perhaps altogether more found in women, especially the multitasking.Kellyanne talks a lot about it, but I love it.There were five women on his top staff, right?Sarah Sanders, myself, Mercedes Schlapp, Kellyanne and Ivanka.We had—Ivanka Trump.
We had 19 school-age children between the five of us.And there’s been no other White House like this, right, Democrat or Republican, no other White House anywhere near that number of senior staff women that were younger with kids aged six months to 16 years old, 19 of them.And so I don't know.There may be something to the multitasking, filling out soccer forms, trying to get kids to school on time, dealing with Kim Jong Un, whatever it was, that I think—and he thinks a lot the same way.
He’s very multidimensional in the way he thinks about problems and vexing challenges facing the country.And you’ve got a world leader calling him here; you’ve got the head of the NFL calling him there; someone else is trying to get in to see him to talk about the city of Detroit, and we’ve got homelessness over here in L.A.And the way he’s able to move through all of those issues and then circle back to the first one and keep going is—not many people I’ve seen have that ability.And I think for those of us that could keep up with that, keep up, keep up, keep up, execute, execute, execute, does it matter who gets the credit?I don’t want any credit.No thank you for any credit.That’s kind of me and a lot of the other women that he’s worked with.
And then we stayed alongside through thick and thin and believe so strongly in his leadership and who he is as a leader and what he’s willing to sacrifice to do what he does.It’s incredibly inspiring.So I’ve seen it firsthand, and it was really fun for me when Mark Cuban, who was a Kamala surrogate, said, “You never see smart, strong women around him.”And I thought, oh, no, you just did not say that, Mark Cuban.That did not just come out of your mouth, because you could say a lot of things about Donald Trump, but that is one you cannot say. …
Trump’s Supporters
… I’d like to talk a little bit about, when they do the raid, they do all the cases, the criminal cases, they seem to be the final nail in the coffin of Donald Trump.Boy, if you’ve ever taken him, you sent him like Napoleon to Elba.You’ve locked him off.You’ve raided his house.You’ve got commissions after him.You’ve got potential—by the hair of his chinny-chin-chin.Not being impeached a second time.You’re really, whoever it is, the rule of law is after him, whatever you want to call it.But in a funny, weird, Trump way, and I’d like your explanation, because you probably know how to say it, his voters don’t have the reaction a lot of people think they’d have to all these 43 criminal indictments, blah, blah, blah.Explain.How are his supporters reacting to all of this, and what’s that coming from?
Well, and it’s more—I would even add a little bit more to this.Keep in mind all of the charges, the raids, the bankruptcy efforts, right, charge him half a billion dollars or whatever for doing something that was not even a crime.But you realize there was an effort in Congress to actually pass legislation to strip him of Secret Service protection if in fact he went to prison.3This is really dark, dark stuff.
And so I believe, to answer your question about his supporters that stay with him, and not just his base, but you see the whole, new round of people that have come into the movement, they just know that that’s not the America that they want their children to grow up in; that a government that is so weaponized that against a former president of the United States that by all accounts did good work in the White House and actually fought for the average, everyday American from Texas or Idaho or wherever, that that wasn’t OK, and that at some point, it’s gone too far.
And that’s what, when I talked to the president the day of that first indictment, that was what was really on my heart, that I have not given up on a country, and my country, that that’s OK.I just can’t—and I told him.I said, “I believe that the American people are going to be with us on this.”And he believed it, too.I wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t know.But he believed that as well.So I just think that everybody, for the most part, you saw the entire country move to the right in the last election.And there were a lot of people that didn’t like his personality, didn’t like his tweets, just weren’t sure that they wanted another four years that ultimately went into the ballot box and voted for Donald Trump, because of the strength, because of the fight, because they knew that at the end of the day, while they may not love everything he says, that he would go back into the White House, he was beholden to no one other than the people and that he would do right by them.
… You go back and you look at his background, the bankruptcies, reality TV shows, the successes, the failures, the marriages, everything, Gosh, he just about, his whole empire just about collapses a couple of times, maybe more than that, lots—4,000 lawsuits.But here he is at the moment, he’s about to run again.What is it?Where is it coming from?I know you say patriotism.I know that it’s a sort of—I know what you mean by that.But tangibly, what’s going on inside this guy that makes him keep doing it?Because he doesn’t have to do it.So what’s he doing?
He sure doesn’t have to do it.And for those of us that have been at Mar-a-Lago and Bedminster and his home in New York City, you think, why would he want to leave any of this?And he loves golf so much, he certainly isn’t going to be playing nearly as much golf starting in about 60 days.I think that there is no doubt it’s the love of country, the belief he’s been called.But I also think he’s just a fighter.And I think for him to walk away at this point and say, “Yeah, you know what?You won.I don’t want to deal with the lawsuits anymore.I don’t”—although he would have had to—“but I don’t want to deal with the coming impeachments.I don’t want to deal with the media hammering me every day.I don’t want the media going after my family.”What his kids endured, he talks about that a lot.That would have been the easiest thing in the world to do, say, “Never mind. I’m done.”
But again, the more the other side tried to take him out, the more resolute he became in what he needed to do to fight for all of us.And that’s just something way deep in that heart of his, that he just, he would never admit defeat.He was not going to let them beat him, and in so doing he was perhaps going to save America.And I know that sounds somewhat, a little bit blown up, but I just believe that.And saving America and our freedom here, it is a worldwide deal.So it isn’t just about our country; it’s about the world.And I think he feels that deep in his soul.
… So people love him.He’s a fighter.They want him to run.He runs in the primary and wins.I don’t think there was ever any real doubt about that.And he’s running against Joe Biden, who is not at the top of his game.A lot of people don’t know that he’s not at the top of his game, but he’s not at the top of his game.How’s Donald Trump feel about running against Joe Biden in those first months leading up to what is then the end of Joe Biden’s political career and probably legacy, which is that terrible debate, he and President Trump had?So just walk me along a little bit about how Donald Trump is through that process.
I think President Trump felt very strongly that it was one thing to run against a hypothetical Joe Biden four years ago, five years ago, right?It was one thing for us to say, under a President Joe Biden, the borders will be open; you’ll have millions cross and integrate into communities, a lot of dangerous people.You’ll have inflation because the spending will go up.All the deregulating we had done to open the economy up, there will be re-regulating.That was all hypothetical.
And I think that the people, not his base necessarily but the independents and the moderate Democrats, especially in the swing states, it was hard to convince them that life under a hypothetical Biden-Harris may not be as good two, three, four years after an election.But whether it was Joe Biden or Kamala Harris or whomever, Pete Buttigieg, whomever it may have ended up being, that set of policies is remarkably similar from the left.
And so I think there are two ways to look at your question.I think first, the president running against Joe Biden, he believed and I believe this, too, that we had to spend that intervening four years working to lock election integrity down, to ensure that it was a fair vote.And by the way, both the Democrats and the Republicans, when the other side wins, says that—even Hillary Clinton, right, in ’16 said, “Well, the election was stolen.”4It’s just kind of part of the narrative.And that is why I think the election integrity movement is so important.This is the United States of America.I can ATM $500 in a second anywhere around the world and know that it’s a secure transaction.Why is it so hard to have elections that are not secure and admittedly so by both sides?5So that was part of it.
4
The Washington Post: Hillary Clinton: Trump is an ‘illegitimate president’
And I think he believed that if the elections were secure that he would be able to beat Joe Biden.But I also want to give him credit.It wasn’t just Joe Biden.This is what I began to say at the beginning of this particular conversation.It wasn’t just Joe Biden.It was that set of policies that he believed and we believed were so out of touch with the average, mainstream American.… And so, with that in mind, I think beating Joe Biden in his mind was probably a little bit easier than a lot of the others that Democrats could have put up.But at the end of the day, at the end of the day, it was the policies that were going to win this race, and so it wouldn’t have mattered who they put up, Gavin Newsom.Who didn’t matter; that if we had a fair election and we were able to tell our story and he was given the opportunity to do it and to talk policy, that he would win.
But it wasn’t just the policies, because he’s so—he’s something else.He’s the X-factor.It’s not just the policies because then it could have been, I don't know, Mitch McConnell running for president.
Well, you’re right about that, because you look at—he carried Wisconsin, carried Michigan, carried Nevada, carried Arizona.But there were U.S. Senate races in those states that were not carried by the Republican America First candidate.So that’s a really important point, that he does have a factor, that you have a Trump voter, that it doesn’t carry down into the lower races on the ballot.And that’s an important point that we as a movement have to really think about and figure out how to approach.
Because what the hell is that, and can you bottle that?
Well, there will never be another Donald Trump.I had the incredible honor of speaking at the Madison Square Garden rally.I was not in the prime time.I was back towards the beginning.So none of your viewers would have seen me.
I hope you said nothing about Puerto Rico.
I said nothing about Puerto Rico.I did talk about, though—again, Kamala Harris opened herself up for a lot of this, but at the rally she had had the week before, I think in Michigan, where she said, you know, the guys were protesting, “Jesus is Lord.”And she just—you just don’t say to people, “You’re at the wrong rally for saying, ‘Jesus is Lord.’6Go down the street to the other rally.”I thought, oh, my goodness.Again, another gift, like Mark Cuban.Let’s talk about that.That’s why I said, “You all are at the right rally.”
6
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: 'Oh, you guys are at the wrong rally': Kamala Harris counters hecklers at La Crosse event
But I think there will never be another politician ever that will fill Madison Square Garden with tens of thousands of people, with tens of thousands of more people waiting outside to listen to a policy/political speech.Like this is just, we’re living in the middle of history, and it just won’t happen again.But I believe that if we do our job right, I believe that if he has the second term that I think he’s going to have, where he delivers on all of these promises, and that the American people again feel that their lives are better because of these policies, that that will begin to solve for itself that sort of gap between Donald J. Trump and the regular Republican candidates.
The First Assassination Attempt
How much do you think it helped the love for Donald Trump that he got nearly killed by an assassin?
I think that made a difference.I really do.I think that, and I talked about this quite a bit at the time, the Butler, Pennsylvania.I talked a lot about how you never know when you’re in combat and shot at or shot how you will react.And a lot of people would be so stunned or so scared that it’s kind of when you are tested, when the strength of your character and the fight within you is tested in moments like that.And most of us never have—you know, God bless America, most of us are not getting shot at every day.It’s a time of pretty amazing prosperity within our country.
So when he was shot at and shot and missed death by a millimeter, but immediately jumped back to his feet and said, “Fight, fight, fight,” I think it convinced a lot of people that perhaps to that point didn’t love him, maybe voted for him in ’16, didn’t vote for him in ’20, but came back into the fold because they saw in him something that, again, we would all perhaps aspire to be, and that is, in the hardest moments, we are our best self.And I think that’s what we saw with him in Butler, Pennsylvania.
You, I take it, were not surprised when you saw him put this fist up and say, “Fight, fight, fight.”But where were you?You didn’t happen to be there.
I was not there.I was back in Forth Worth, Texas.I had it on TV, but I was outside dealing with some children or some dogs or some sort of pet thing.And my son came running out, and he said, “Mom, the president was just shot.”And I ran in, and I saw it on TV.So I saw him kind of walking off.I just saw the last instant.And I said, “That’s who he is.First of all, it looks like he is going to be OK,” although we didn’t know for a couple of hours.But second of all, that’s the man that we—those of us that know him and would run into a fire for him over and over again, that’s the man that we know and love will do anything for.
When Elon Musk joins the band, what are your thoughts about the impact of that and the potential success or inherent problem that Elon Musk can present?
Well, Elon Musk is a visionary of visionaries.I’ve spent a little time with him now.We were all together at Mar-a-Lago last week and the week before.He’s now the newest Texan—maybe not the very newest, but he’s kind of my neighbor.I told him last week, I said, “I never thought in a million years that Elon Musk would be a fellow Texan.”But he loves Texas.He’s building an empire there.I mean that in the best way.So I think that Elon saw what a lot of the Americans saw that gave the president the popular vote, which was fairly unexpected.
Keep in mind, not to get too much off of the Elon question, but it’s an important point, that our side is significantly outspent.7The Republicans are significantly outspent at the presidential level, at the Senate level, at the House level.And we’ve always said, “We don’t need as much money because we believe we have the truth on our side.”But nevertheless—so when you consider that in my home state I saw Kamala ad after Kamala ad after Kamala ad, knowing that Texas would never vote for her—I mean, it’s a solid red state versus our side—we run no ads in California, in New York, in Vermont, in Oregon.Those states, to win a White House, we had to put every penny of our resources into the swing states because that’s the only resources we had.
So the fact that he won the popular vote without us spending any time or money and came within five points in New Jersey, Minnesota, New Mexico, within 10 points in New York, I think 12 points in California, not having spent one dollar, I think is extremely telling.
And I think Elon was helpful in that, right?Bobby Kennedy, helpful.Kind of the team of rivals, speaking of kind of an Abraham Lincoln term, that came together, the Tulsi Gabbards, I think helped convince a lot of people that this probably was the right team to vote for.But I also think Elon himself represents the American dream in the best way.The guy is building rockets and trying to figure out how to colonize Mars.The fact that I’m even saying this out loud and that is even a sentence that is realistic is remarkable and insane and incredible, and only in America could this happen and only with someone like Elon.
So I love—I loved the last few weeks seeing him moving around Mar-a-Lago, sitting in the meetings with the president, sitting next to him at a couple of events that I was speaking at and watching him take president Trump down to watch one of his rocket launches.This is the best of America.This is who we are.And we’re innovators and we’re builders, and we dream of the stars and getting to them and living on them.And Elon is a big part of that.So I hope he is going to have a very significant role, not just—he has one right now and will probably for the next four years, but that his role in the American narrative, going forward—he’s young—for decades is going to be outsized and I believe very welcome.
Trump’s 2024 Election Victory
Where were you on election night?
I was at Mar-a-Lago with the president and his team and family.
Talk to us about that night, what was going on when you saw how he was.
He was in a really good place.And we felt really, really good going into Election Day.I think Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, Michael Whatley, Lara Trump at the RNC—the teams that were working together for years at that point, but it worked.And I personally, the night before, had helped organize a tele-town hall for African American men in Detroit, Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Atlanta, right, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin.And we had invited about 100,000 Black men that the data showed were low-propensity or no propensity, meaning if they had voted, it was a long time ago, but most likely had never voted, but that for whatever reason the data showed could be open.
And I think it would have been a huge win if we had gotten 5,000.That could make a difference in some of these states.We had almost 20,000 Black men join a one-hour, tele-town hall on Monday, Nov. 4.I left that tele-town hall and then jumped on another one with the Bobby Kennedy team, with 6,000 moms in Wisconsin, talking about making America healthy again.And just the energy and the feel of people from every walk of life, Democrats, Independents, never having voted, that seemed to be all in and wanted a real change.
I just felt walking into Mar-a-Lago the next night with the bigger team, with those of us that have been with the president for a really long time, it just felt really good.I was not surprised when—there were big screens everywhere, kind of with the different shows, the CNN desk, the Fox desk, the other desks.So we had these huge TV screens, and we were all watching.
And, you know, the early voting was remarkable for our side.We’ve never hit early voting like what we were able to do this last time.A lot of that was because the president made a huge effort to let our side know that early voting was not just OK, it was encouraged.There had been some mixed messages through the years on actual, the security of the election and when to vote.But we went all in on early voting this time.There was a lot more sophisticated effort in the swing states on ballot chasing, so watching who’d voted, who hadn’t, where it was legal, of course, but going to figure out how to get people to the polls where we needed them.
And so all those numbers, the voter registration over the last few years, the Republican, the red side had far outpaced the blue side.So every indicator was extremely positive, but you never know until Election Day, and so as the numbers rolled in, first from the East Coast and then kind of the middle of the country where I am, and then the West Coast, we realized—this was his term—“too big to rig,” that this was going to be a monumental night.Not only was he likely to win every swing state but even win the popular vote, which as I mentioned earlier, was incredible.
So what did everybody miss who thought this wasn’t going to happen?
I don't know.I wish I could tell you.I felt so strongly that this was going to happen.And even when I was seeing the polls at 49-49 or whatever it was, I just thought that just can’t be right.I think there’s been a lot read, a lot researched and written and talked about the quiet Trump voter.I also think you had—I mean, the largest category were Black men that unexpectedly either voted for the first time or flipped sides.Right after that is Hispanic, Latino, then the Jewish vote.You had a significant number of blue-collar workers continue to come over.He even won the women vote.8And that’s what a lot of people said.My friend Kellyanne has often said, “Everyone says Trump has a woman problem,” but we’re not really seeing that on our side and with our internal work.
And so I think people just want a chance at the American dream.They want a secure border.They want health care that works.They don’t want to pay 20% more for their groceries, 30% more, 40% more.They don’t want that.And so again, when you’re running against a record versus a record, and you can get that message out, even if you’ve got Beyoncé or Oprah Winfrey or Mark Cuban or LeBron James or Taylor Swift, even with those celebrities on your side that people in America tend to think, "Oh, gosh, well, if Taylor Swift is endorsing him, that means that millions of young women ages 18 to 28 are now going to turn out and vote for Joe Biden or Kamala Harris."It just doesn’t work that way.
I have nothing against those very successful Americans, and I give them their due at achieving the America dream.But the average, every day America is going to listen and look and realize what’s at stake and what they want, the world they want their children to grow up in.
The amazing thing is they had Beyoncé and they had everybody else, Taylor Swift and whatever, but the other side had that—I mean, this was the way it was all portrayed—the Madison Square moment.My God, the explosion after that in the press, everywhere.If anybody was doubting that, gee, there is a real difference of perspective happening in America, and then it doesn’t seem to matter; that is, Madison Square Garden didn’t seem to matter.Part of that may be that it wasn’t what we were told it was, but part of it is also, by then, I guess maybe people made their minds up, or there is just a huge difference between us.
That could be.Also, thinking back to that exact moment, which seems like 500 years ago, but it was just like three weeks ago—it is crazy to think about.Keep in mind, it was either that day or soon after that Joe Biden, I think accidentally, called Trump supporters garbage.And then, I mean, President Trump will never miss an opportunity, ever.And I was not part of the conversation, but I would be shocked if it wasn’t the president himself who said, “Get me a garbage truck.Get me the orange uniform.As soon as I walk off of the plane, I’m going right over to the garbage truck, and I’m going to do the media from the garbage truck.”
And you just think about those incredible moments, the McDonald’s, right, where he is like, putting the fries—and he’s a very well-known germaphobe, or he doesn’t—you know, he’s very clean and takes that very seriously.So for those of us that were watching, he said, “Look at Bobby,” or whatever his name was, “how he taught me how to do this.You put the fries in, and then you crunch it down.And look, I don’t ever even touch the fries.”And then he hands the fries out the window.And that’s just who he is, and so many people don’t get to see that.
But those iconic moments that break through I think mean more to the suburban mom in Detroit who just wants her kids to have a good education and to be able to walk and ride their bike safely through their streets, and the guy who is serving French fries is perhaps the one that is going to do that versus the other candidate who’s got Beyoncé waving in the background.I just think that the other side perhaps missed the moment, missed what real Americans care about.And as amazing as Taylor Swift may be in her billion-dollar tour and her going to the Kansas City Chiefs game, she’s not a game changer.It’s the American voter that can see through all that, and that’s what they—they spoke loud and clear.
… So what does it mean to Donald Trump, standing there, given that, after the composite of his entire life, which we will have shown, and all the challenges, and all the good and all the bad and some of the ugly, what does that inauguration mean to that man who you know so well?
I believe that that inauguration is the culmination of the greatest American comeback in history.And this country was built on the impossible, the miraculous, the unprecedented, the proving the doubters wrong over and over and over again.When our Founding Fathers were fighting the tyranny of the British Empire, only one-third of current American citizens wanted them to do that.One-third wanted to remain as things were, the status quo, and one-third wanted to stay with the British Empire.
So you think about the people that have gone before and standing on those Capitol steps, what that has meant and the great American experiment and the extraordinary impact that this country has had on world history.And Donald Trump, at that inauguration, is the epitome of that American story.And it’s never perfect.It’s very imperfect, right?The American story is very imperfect from beginning to today.But it is about hustle and grit and passion and love and freedom and liberty and never giving up on what makes this country great.And that’s what I believe the inauguration stood for.
Do you think he’ll ever be satisfied, or do you think he’ll keep trying to prove himself in some way?
I think that he will finish this second term, and I think he will go home to Mar-a-Lago; he’ll go home to New York City; he’ll go home to Bedminster, and he will realize that he saved a country and will be satisfied that he did everything that he could do to do so.I don’t think he'll ever be satisfied that America has met its best days.I think we always have to fight for that every day, all day, every day.But I think he will have moved a country.He will have created an inflection point.He will have realigned us with our founders’ vision of a constitutional government based on those founding ideals of self-governance and freedom in a way that many people thought was impossible.But he did it, and he’ll do it.
You talk about him in much bigger, grander terms than most people do talk to us.You haven’t said the word “narcissist” even once in this entire [interview].
I actually don’t believe it.
Of course, neither have I.
I don’t believe it.I know him so well.I know he gets a lot of people who say that.But those of us that know him, I don’t think you’ll ever hear words like that.A lot of people in our last administration that he fired—and you know, listen, he’s from New York.I would probably fire people a little bit differently because I’m a Southern girl from Texas, but he’s a New Yorker and a real estate guy, and he has no patience for incompetence, disloyalty, not doing your very best for this country.It’s not just for him; it's for the country.And so, very summarily, he would say good-bye and good luck and see you later, and that didn’t go over so well with a lot of people.
No, I don’t believe in the narcissism narrative.I’ve known him now for years and, as well as a lot of people, not his family but those that know and love him, that is not in the vernacular when we describe him.
When you heard John Kelly say that stuff about him, you must know John Kelly very well.9
He was my first chief of staff.I was with three.He was the first.
What did you think when Kelly, when Gen. Kelly, whatever you want to call him—
Yeah, you know, Gen. Kelly is an American hero.He lost a son in battle.I have two sons and two daughters.I can’t even imagine what that would do.So I give him a lot of credit for his service to the country, first and foremost.But secondly, it was incredibly disappointing, and in a way, just it hurt for me to hear him say those things, because they just weren’t true.
And President Trump, what was his response?
You know, he is probably a little less hurt.That’s how I describe myself.He was—I actually don’t remember a specific conversation, but I would suspect, and having lived through it, that he was just mad.It just—it was unfair.And the things he said—I didn’t follow it basically detail by detail, but I followed it closely enough to know, I think Gen.Kelly was even saying things that the president said while he was at a certain memorials or at different places, and it’s just a lie.I don't know what else to say.I mean, maybe in Gen. Kelly’s mind it sort of processed itself or it manifested.I don't know, but there is no way that President Trump would ever say anything like that.
Latest Interviews
Latest Interviews
Policies
Teacher Center
Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation
Koo and Patricia Yuen
FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of WGBH Educational Foundation. Web Site Copyright ©1995-2025 WGBH Educational Foundation. PBS is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.
Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding is provided by the Abrams Foundation; Park Foundation; the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, and additional support from Koo and Patricia Yuen. FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of WGBH Educational Foundation. Web Site Copyright ©1995-2025 WGBH Educational Foundation. PBS is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.
