For the Sunday opening monologue of his Fox News Channel “The Next Revolution” program, host Steve Hilton took on the so-called Never Trumpers that dominate parts of the political media.
He included Joe Scarborough and Nicolle Wallace of MSNBC and Washington Post columnist George Will.
Hilton, referring to it as “never Trump cult,” questioned if those critics entirely understood Trump’s policy agenda.
Transcript as follows:
The establishment Republican psychodrama — in the last week or so, the snooty and snoozy salons of the anti-Trump Republicans have come to life in a heated debate over election strategy, not about how to advance conservative principles or anything substantive like that.
Instead, they are bickering over exactly how big of a win they want for Joe Biden. What’s this all about? This never Trump cult? Why are all of these weird establishment Republicans like Joe Scarborough and Nicolle Wallace and George Will trying so hard to get Biden elected and deliver the country to a Democratic Party that is rapidly being taken over by the loony left?
They say it’s about principle, but it can’t be. They actually agree with the President on the big principles.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Conservatives do think we need to have a constant argument about the proper scope and actual competence of government.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HILTON: Yes. And Trump has done more to actually limit the scope of government than any previous Republican President George Will supported, especially on tax and regulation.
On immigration, when Joe Scarborough was in Congress, he voted to increase the size of the Border Patrol and build a strengthened border fence, no different to what President Trump has been doing.
It is, however, very different to in fact, the direct opposite of what a President Biden would do. The never Trumpers say they believe in lower taxes, less regulation, smaller government. Biden wants higher taxes, more regulation, and bigger government.
For years, the never Trumpers fought for school choice, controlled immigration, free speech and due process. Now, they’re fighting to shut down charter schools, open the borders, take away people’s rights.
And to try and make sure it happens, they are even working for a total Democratic takeover — House, Senate, the lot. Bizarrely, they’re now targeting that well known MAGA diehard, Senator Susan Collins of Maine.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Maine deserves a leader, not a Trump stooge. It’s time for Susan Collins to go.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HILTON: Senator Collins is one of President Trump’s most vocal Republican critics, but whatever. The never Trumpers want her replaced by a Democrat.
These establishment Republicans are literally campaigning to abolish the legislative filibuster, so the Democrats only need a simple majority to give statehood to D.C. and Puerto Rico for a permanent leftwing Senate Majority, to gerrymandered districts, so Republicans are shut out of power in Washington and state capitals and to pack the Supreme Court, so the left gets permanent control of the Judicial Branch.
Added all together, the socialist economics, the centralizing madness, the constitutional vandalism, it is a complete repudiation of conservative principle.
They never Trumpers can’t possibly believe in it. So what’s it all about really? They say it’s because Trump is corrupt.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEVE SCHMIDT, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: It is an unprecedented level of corruption around this President and around this presidency, around Washington, D.C. — unprecedented in the modern era.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HILTON: But if they’re so concerned about corruption, why are they supporting Biden? He is the most corrupt politician to be nominated by a major party in the modern era — the puppet of his campaign donors, political controllers and his family’s employers.
Biden didn’t just corruptly abuse his office to enrich his son Hunter, as is well known, but as we have documented on swamp watch his brother, James, his other brother, Frank, and his son-in-law, Howard.
If you care about corruption, the last candidate you’d support is Joe Biden. No, it must be something else.
The never Trumpers say the President is destroying America.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RICK WILSON, FORMER GOP STRATEGIST: Donald Trump is a fatal and consequential moment, I think not just for the party, but for the Republic.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HILTON: What are you talking about? Trump has kept America out of the wars that you never Trumpers took us into. He built up the military that you depleted. He created jobs to replace the ones you destroyed.
For American workers, he raised the wages, cut by establishment Republicans to please the donors who made you rich, Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace and all the rest of the gang.
You say Trump is a cruel racist.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NICOLLE WALLACE, MSNBC HOST: He is in his heart, he would appear to be a racist.
This is cruelty operationalized by an incompetent and vapid administration.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HILTON: That was about separating families at the border. Totally unacceptable to Nicolle Wallace. Except when her guy, President Bush did it, albeit, at a lower rate, she said there was nothing President Bush did that she wasn’t emotionally invested in.
These great Crusaders for racial justice in the Trump era didn’t seem to give to figs for black people when Bush was flying over New Orleans watching them suffer after Katrina; when Republicans sent them to jail in droves, destroying black communities and separating black families inside our borders.
A wrong that was finally righted by this President with thousands of black men serving unfair sentences now being released, thanks to Trump’s Criminal Justice Reform, not to mention the unprecedented economic opportunities he created for black and Hispanic Americans.
So if it is not really about racism, or corruption or policy or principle or, in fact, anything of substance at all. What is it about?
When you actually watch what they say and how they speak, you inevitably come to the conclusion that this whole thing, this entire never Trump vanity project — and that’s literally what it is — is about class condescension.
They hate Trump and his supporters because of how they look and how they speak.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: He is suffering because his coalition was very small, very white and very angry.
WILSON: That’s partly him playing to their base and playing to their audience. You know, the credulous Boomer rube demo that backs Donald Trump.
JOE SCARBOROUGH, MSNBC HOST: Well, the primary voters in the Republican Party have devolved into a Trumpist cult.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HILTON: The Trumpist cult. They don’t even know what they mean. They think Trumpism is something about tweeting too much.
In fact, as we have consistently laid out here, the President has given the Republican Party a long-overdue policy turnaround with a new conservative populism, pro-business on tax and regulation, pro-worker on trade and immigration.
The establishment GOP was just one thing, pro-donor. The never Trumpers are delusional if they think the Republican Party is going back to its corrupt past that made the rich richer, the workers poorer, and sold out America to China.
But the never Trumpers don’t actually care about any of that. Joe Scarborough doesn’t care about any of that. Joe Scarborough has no interest in policy or governing or substance of any kind. Joe Scarborough doesn’t care about the black kids in charter schools whose opportunities will be destroyed by Biden and the Democrats.
Joe Scarborough doesn’t care about the small businesses that are going to be crushed as the regulations pile up. Joe Scarborough doesn’t care about anything. In the real world, he cares about the smug pats on the back from his self-righteous friends and his snooty little media bubble.
For Joe Scarborough and George Will and Nicolle Wallace and Anthony Scaramucci, it’s all just vanity.
They can afford a Biden presidency. They’ll be fine under this fluorosis and stagnation of a Democrat economy. They are decadent dilettantes ready to sacrifice working Americans’ future for their social standing.
No one is saying Trump is perfect. We’ve criticized him and his behavior on this show many times. But an election is not just another tweet or opinion piece in The New York Times. It is a choice about the policies that will affect millions of Americans.
A vote for Biden will hurt working Americans, and a vote for Trump will help them, as it did before. In their hearts, the never Trumpers must know that, which makes their actions even more unprincipled, incoherent and indecent.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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