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On The Nation: Patrick Gower interviews Philip Rucker

On The Nation: Patrick Gower interviews Philip Rucker


Youtube clips from the show are available here.


Headlines:

Trump attempt to reset campaign probably “too little, too late”

Campaign is flailing post-convention, and Republican party is deeply divided

Clinton campaign riding high but voters still don’t love her

Clinton presidency likely to be hamstrung by Republican congress and tone of the campaign

Now, there are just over 70 days to go until America elects a new president. Despite the ongoing meltdown, which is otherwise known as Donald Trump’s campaign, some pundits do say anything could happen. So just what is going on in the polls, and are Trump’s recent attempts to soften his approach too little too late? Philip Rucker is a political correspondent for the Washington Post, and he joins me now live from Washington DC. Philip, a quick take here. In a couple of sentences, how do you rate Donald Trump’s campaign so far?

Philip Rucker: Well, it really has been flailing for several weeks now. He’s had a very difficult stretch coming out of the Republican Convention a few weeks ago. He should’ve had his party united, the Republican Party united, and instead it was deeply divided. And he’s had a number of comments that voters have interpreted it as racist, as undisciplined, and the challenge for Donald Trump has been to prove not only that he’s qualified and up for the job and ready to be president, but more importantly that he’s a man of good character and that he’s not racist, that he would be an inclusive president for a very diverse and diversifying United States.

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Yeah, so Donald Trump is flailing. How then, in another quick take here on Hillary Clinton’s campaign, how is she going?

You know, she’s riding high at the moment. She seems to be taking full advantage of Donald Trump’s problems, trying to seize on and exploit his vulnerabilities. The problem for Clinton, though, is that voters don’t love her either. The polls show that she’s quite vulnerable on issues of character and trustworthiness, and there’s been a problem that’s dogged her here for months now with the Clinton Foundation. That’s her charitable foundation with her husband. And the latest issue is in just the last couple of days with reports about donors to the foundation, donors from all around the world who were given special access to her when she was Secretary of State, and that has raised a lot of ethical concerns.

And on that, because what they’ve said or what she’s said or what the Clintons have said is that they won’t take any money from overseas donors or corporate donors if she becomes president, but, of course, that means she has been taking money while she’s been Secretary of State and taking money right now. I mean, how much is that going to hurt her? That just does not look good.

Well, it does not look good. The good thing for her is there’s nothing that’s been found to be criminal or that violates any sort of ethical laws here in the United States. That’s not to say it’s not politically damaging, because it certainly looks good, it looks like there’s a lot of smoke, but nobody’s yet found any fire. And so she’s kind of saying, ‘Look, the foundation does good work. It might look messy, but I’ve done nothing wrong here.’ And legally, she has not done anything wrong, but it looks bad, it raises a lot of questions about her character, and it also reminds voters of so much of the baggage that comes along with Clinton as president. She’s been on the national scene now for two decades. Her husband was president. They have all sorts of friends and donors and allies who are going to be owed favours if she were to take office. And so that’s a little bit unseemly in the minds of a lot of voters.

Now, turning back to Donald Trump, because you interviewed him, actually, earlier this month. You sat down with him one on one. What’s he like? Because a lot of New Zealanders look at him and think he’s crazy. What’s he actually like to sit down with one on one?

Well, he’s like no other politician. I can tell you that. He’s actually quite charming. He was very personable, very nice to me, really kind of put on the charm factor and tried to impress me, which made for a good conversation. You know, he’s quick. He, kind of, thinks on his feet. He doesn’t have a lot of patience for minutiae, for diving into issues too deeply. He’s also easily distracted. The interview I had with him took about 50 minutes, and we were sitting over lunch, actually, at one of his golf courses, and he kept looking up at the television behind me, which was playing a news channel, and he saw himself on TV, so he would comment on that all the time. So very easily distracted and a little bit scatter-brained, but a warm person to talk to.

And with Hillary Clinton — and I find this quite astounding, actually — 250 days, or more than 250 days, without a press conference, without someone like you being able to ask her questions in a public forum. What’s that about? I mean, 250 days seems extraordinary.

It is extraordinary. It’s pretty bizarre. We’re not used to presidential candidates at this level being so press averse. I mean, Hillary Clinton, though, has always had a disdain for the news media, going back to her years in the White House when she felt personally burned by the coverage of all of those scandals. And she’s just not been comfortable with reporters. She does not questions very often, and when she does take questions, they tend to be in very brief one-on-one interviews that are in much more controlled settings. So she’ll do an interview with Anderson Cooper, like she did the other night, but it’s only 10 minutes long, and he, sort of, blew through the questions quickly, and there’s not the full press conference environment. You know, look, she’s clearly made a calculation — her and her campaign team — that it’s better for her to take the criticism for not doing press conferences than it would be to actually submit to the questioning at a press conference. That’s her decision. It’s totally her prerogative, but as a journalist, I think I speak for a lot of people in my profession when I say that we’re pretty alarmed by that approach, and it’s pretty troubling for what a presidency would be like under her.

Coming back to Donald Trump again, this campaign reset that he’s had where he’s tried to appeal to black voters, where he’s wound back or flip-flopped, actually, on immigration, is that working for him? Will that work for him? Is it too little too late?

You know, I think time is only going to tell if he’s able to change his image, but I feel like it probably is going to be too little too late. He has now been campaigning for 15 months on a very hard line immigration position of deporting all of the 11 million people who are in this country without documentation, illegally, so to speak. That’s been the mantra of his campaign. Build a wall, make Mexico pay for it, and get all the illegal immigrants out of here. He’s now showing that he might soften and change his position, although we should probably point out that he’s not actually spelled out what that position is. He seems to be in this period here of thinking out loud about what he might do. But I just don’t think that voters are going to forgive him for all the things that he said earlier in the year — the attack on the Mexican-American judge, the various comments about Mexican-Americans being rapists and criminals and some of the other incendiary things that he’s had to say. That’s all on videotape. Hillary Clinton is reminding voters of it every single day in television ads, and I don’t think people are going to forget that.

If we look at the polls and say Hillary Clinton wins, is America happy, then? What happens to all the anger that has fuelled Trump? Is America happy? Surely, it’s not. What happens to that anger that has been there, fuelling the rise of Donald Trump?

The country is as divided as it has ever been, at least in modern times, politically speaking. Historically, if a candidate wins elections and wins by something of a landslide, which is what it looks like Hilary Clinton will do, they get a mandate, and there’s sort of a honeymoon period where the new president is able to pass his or her agenda. I don’t know that that’s going to happen this time. I think there’s a lot of anger and hostility towards Hilary Clinton. She may win, but even if she wins, I think a lot of Republicans will say that she only won because Donald Trump was so flawed, and I think they’re going to try to block a lot of her agenda and prevent it from getting passed and set about the task of defeating her in her re-election four years later. So we’ll have to see. I mean, certainly, she’s going to hope to bring the party together— excuse me, bring the country together and unite all Americans, but things are just so ugly and so divided right now. I don’t know that that’s possible.

So she’s hamstrung from the get-go? She’s hamstrung from the very beginning?

I think so. The tone of this campaign is unlike past campaigns. Normally there’s a divide between Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative, and it’s a fight over tax plans or a fight over what you’re going to do about healthcare or women’s rights. In this case it’s a fight about whether somebody’s a racist and a bigot, and it’s a fight about somebody’s basic character and judgement. Donald Trump is attacking Hillary Clinton on her stamina and personal health. Hillary Clinton is saying that, basically, he’s a racist. I mean, these are very tough, personal attacks going back and forth. They’re only going to get worse, I think, before November, and it’s very hard to bridge the supporters of these two campaigns after the election. I just don’t think Hillary or Trump would be able to do that.

Thank you, Philip. We’ll leave it there. That was excellent, and we hope to catch up with you before the election. Thank you very much for your time.

Glad to be with you guys.

Transcript provided by Able. www.able.co.nz


ends

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