Grover Norquist HARDtalk

Now it's time for HARDtalk.

Welcome to HARDtalk

I'm Stephen Sackur.

After the second presidential debate, Donald Trump

is still standing.

Just.

He took the incoming fire prompted by that old recording

of his foul-mouthed sexual remarks and he responded with ever more

strident attacks on Hillary Clinton.

But many senior Republicans have disowned him.

His disapproval ratings are sky-high.

My guest is one of the American Conservative movement's most

influential voices, Grover Norquist, a long-time fan of Trump's platform,

but has Trump got the Republicans on the road to ruin?

Grover Norquist, in Washington, DC, welcome to Hardtalk.

Good to be with you.

Let us start with that presidential debate on Sunday night

in the United States.

I know you watched it, just as I did, did you watch it

with a sense of shame about the performance

of the Republican candidate, Donald Trump?

Well in the debate, I thought there was the beginning of a focus,

on the very poor economic policies of the Obama administration

and the disastrous recommendations of Hillary Clinton and if Trump

stays on that, he can still win this race,

he is behind now, but when he stays on economics, focuses on that,

he does better in the polls.

When he focuses on Hillary Clinton's actual written down proposals

to raise taxes on all Americans, then he does quite well.

He has actually got a quite sound economic policy in terms of less

regulation, reducing taxes, all the things that in American

history have given us strong periods of economic growth and exactly

what has not happened in the last eight years.

I promise you, I want to talk about the economic platforms

and particularly the taxation platforms of both candidates,

because that is a particular interest of yours.

I asked advisedly about your feelings as you watch that debate

unfold because you know as well as I do that front

and centre of that debate was not economic policy-making,

it was the personalities and the personal styles of the two

candidates and we have to, I think, given that you are a player

on the right of American politics, we have to talk about Mr Trump,

about his decision, still at this point in the race,

to go on the attack about Hillary Clinton,

accusing her and her husband Bill of being abusive to women.

Mr Trump called Hillary Clinton the devil at one point and he said

that the special prosecutor should launch an investigation and she may

well end up in prison.

I want your feelings about that approach from Mr Trump.

I think the point he made about her destruction of females,

I have always been told by lawyers that even if there is not a subpoena

for something that the government asked for, if there is just

in the newspaper, talk that there might be a subpoena

that it is a felony to destroy any evidence.

I think he was less articulate, but what I would have said was,

if I am President and anyone did what you did, I would fire them

and I would have them hauled up on charges,

because there are people who go to prison, as he correctly said,

who did much less than what Hillary Clinton did.

You cannot destroy thousands of e-mails that have been

subpoenaed, but you can if you own the justice department.

Under rule of law, you cannot do that and not face charges

and probably prison for it.

It is a very serious crime in the United States to destroy

evidence that has been asked for under subpoena.

That I think he was quite correct about.

I think he should forget her and say of course she should not be

President, you should have had to resign a long time ago,

given the destruction of evidence, but, moving forward,

let me just say, in a Trump administration, nobody does this

and does not also face jail.

Nobody.

I do not care how important you are and who you are married to,

it does not happen.

Mr Trump himself with the recordings we have now heard, all of us have

heard, from 2005, with lewd, course, disgusting misogynist remarks which,

to many people, represent a form of at least open acceptance

of sexually offensive almost sexually assaulting behaviour,

you choose just to gloss over that, do you?

No, I was talking about what he was focused on in that,

obviously that came up and he said he was very not proud of that

and quite so...

He called it locker room banter, is that fair enough for you?

I think he should have gone further, in repudiating the comments

and making it clear that it was destructive.

He should have gone much further than Hillary Clinton did

when she was on tape mocking a rape victim where she helped the guy

who was charged with it.

When Hillary did that, I think that is a much more

disgusting thing than what Trump did and I put them both

into the category of pretty disgusting behaviour towards women

and victims of sexual misadventure.

I think that is unhelpful in both of their cases.

It is true that the press has found the comments of Trump more

interesting to talk about than Hillary's

although I think making fun of rape victims is probably beyond the pale.

Mrs Clinton has categorically denied that.

I tell you what, I am interested to hear you and it seems to be

that we have found that very rare creature in Washington,

DC, a senior Republican who is prepared still to front up

as a clear open public supporter of Donald Trump.

You are a rare breed today.

If you want to ask about how the campaign or debate are going,

we can talk about that.

It is accurate that Hillary has come out and said in her proposals

that she would raise $1 trillion in taxes...

I promise you that I will get there, but I want to do the politics

and then get deep into the policy.

The policy is the politics.

Let me point out to you that many senior Republicans and we can talk

about some of the most senior, starting with John McCain in Arizona

and a whole bunch of others and we hear today that Paul Ryan

is having a very serious discussion with his team about walking away

from his endorsement of Donald Trump, the most senior

figures in your party, the Republican party today,

are running away from Donald Trump, but you are not and I want to know

why you are not.

For two reasons, one, I have not actually endorsed

Donald Trump, I am supportive of his economic policies compared

to Hillary Clinton's and if you're asking for a judgment on how

the campaigns are going it is quite correct that Hillary Clinton

and those in the press who support Hillary Clinton do not

want to focus on her tax policy, do not want to focus on her support

for new regulations, do not want to focus on her failures

as Secretary of State and do not want to focus on what Donald Trump

has laid out as a plan on economics.

They want to focus on something else and Donald Trump,

and Hillary Clinton's comments.

Hillary Clinton has been very vicious to the women that

Bill Clinton mistreated over the years.

This idea that Hillary stands up for womanhood is nonsense.

She spent her entire life trashing the women that Bill Clinton abused.

You are sticking to Donald Trump's talking points, you say you have not

endorsed him, but everything you're saying suggests to me

that there is no mind that you feel that Donald Trump is fit to be

President of the USA and do you recognise that not only a huge

number of important people in your own party no longer believe

that, but clearly many Americans sitting at home watching Mr Trump's

performances and listening to his words over the last decade

or more, simply cannot accept that he is fit to be in that

building we see pictured behind you, the White House.

You are reading Hillary Clinton's talking points as opposed to asking

what is happening in the campaign and the country.

I am an American, I will have to live either with someone

who thinks taxes should be raised on all Americans,

rich, poor, middle class, Hillary Clinton who thinks

the policies over the last year should be continued and who has

endorsed the foreign policy that has gotten us into the present

challenges we have.

Or someone who would actually sign the legislation that the Republican

House and Senate would put forward.

If Donald Trump does well, winning in the race even if he did not win,

he will have a Republican house and Senate and we can begin

the process of reducing taxes and less regulation.

It does take a Republican signature to do that.

A final point on that and then we will get to the discussion,

the economic and tax policy.

You obviously do not want to go there and Hillary Clinton

cannot do that.

The beauty of the show is we have time to do it all.

Bear with me and we will get to what you want to talk about.

The tone of the debates, we have had two of them now,

the tone that Donald Trump comes out with, the stridency

and the accusations, I only mention the accusations

about Bill Clinton and I must emphasise that Mr Clinton

categorically denies as well.

The tone that he is using is creating the most

toxic divisive atmosphere in the United States to date.

Do you not worry about that either?

OK, let's be serious about this.

I live in the United States, the Clintons have done nothing

but spew this stuff out, first at Bush 41, the Republican Congress,

I think that makes her unacceptable as a presidential candidate.

The challenge is, we have to have one of these two characters

who is going to win and if you want to know who has got a policy that

would help the United States both economically and in terms of job

creation, Trump would sign the bills that Congress would pass.

With Hillary you would have another Obama who would veto all that.

You have wanted me from the very beginning to get deep into tax

and economic policy, so let us have a go at that.

The entire campaign.

Hillary does not want to and I understand that.

Trump at his rallies does not spend a whole lot of time talking

about tax and economic policy, you know that full well.

Let us get there now, according to the tax foundation

analysis of Donald Trump's tax plan, it is going to involve a loss

of between 3.9 and $5.9 trillion of revenues coming into the federal

government over the next decade and he has no idea how

he is going to fill that hole.

Two things.

The Republicans in the House have five times voted for Paul Ryan's

form of entitlements, which do overtime

dramatically reduce...

They do not come anywhere close to filling a $5.9 trillion hole.

Actually over a decade, there are six trillion

dollars of reductions.

In that case, why is Donald Trump talking about emergency measures?

If we crash the economy, it does not matter because we can

buy back our debt at discounted rates.

Why is he saying that if he is so confident that the sums

are going to add up?

Two things.

One is if you look at his proposal, first of all it has to go

through the House and the Senate.

His tax proposal is similar to the House Republican proposal

and would be extremely helpful.

One thing that your viewers might want to know and they would not know

from listening to Hillary Clinton or her apologists talking

about the plan but we have a 35% corporate rate in the United States

which is maybe the highest in the world and certainly

the highest in the world in any significant economy.

He wants to take that to 50%.

Hillary Clinton once added a trillion dollars in higher taxes,

many of them on businesses.

She is for not reducing the rates for anybody,

either individuals, rich or poor or companies,

we cannot compete in the United States as well as we ought

to with a 35% rate when the European average, is 25%.

We have historically had lower taxes than Europe but in our businesses

we have higher taxes than Europe.

The Republicans have called for reducing this.

Democrats have refused to.

Hillary wants to make the problem worse.

She spelled out 1.3 trillion in higher taxes.

Not only on higher income people but on businesses and she endorsed

attacks on anyone who makes less than 113,000.

She has endorsed Bernie Sanders' wage tax.

Says she will only tax rich people, on the other hand she has said

she would sign a bill that will tax middle income and low income people.

That is a future we cannot afford.

That is something that Hillary Clinton and her campaign

says is not the way they described their own policy.

I want to ask you this...

She said in Iowa.

Do you care...?

You said something that was not true.

I told you what the Hillary Clinton campaign characterised their tax

plan as and I am telling you, they characterised their tax plan

as redistributive only in the extent that they are going to target

the top 1% of the richest Americans.

Most of their focus is the top 0.1% and she calls it her fair share

strategy and you know it as well as I do.

She has also endorsed a soda pop tax, tax on guns, endorsed taxes...

Bernie Sanders' tax of anyone who makes less than 118,000 a year,

pays a tax, everybody, that is a tax on middle income

and lower income people.

She can say she will not do that, but she has endorsed it.

I will ask you a very basic question.

Do you care about the gross and growing inequality

in the USA today?

I am very concerned that lower income people do not have jobs,

if we had grown at Reagan growth rates instead of at Obama/Clinton

rates, there would be more than 10 million Americans in work.

I asked my question.

Donald Trump is a self proclaimed multi billionaire and under

the Trump plan, those earning the billions and we are talking

about the top 0.1% of the population will still only pay,

if indeed they pay tax, at least we think we know,

he will not tell us, Donald Trump has not paid federal

income tax for a long time, those who have paid it,

at the top rate of 33%.

Do you think that is right?

There are two ways to look at this.

There is the left wing way, that Hillary Clinton puts forward,

they spent 50 years with the great society here in the United States

where they said they knew how to cure poverty.

They spent trillions of dollars, maybe 20 trillion dollars

and poverty has not necessarily gotten better as a result.

They have given up on saying they know how to help poor people.

So the new thing that you have said is inequality,

well, you can reduce inequality in one

of two ways, you can help create

jobs for people who do not have them, go from zero to $20,000

or $30,000 a year, that reduces inequality

or you could shoot Bill Gates, and that it reduces inequality.

So you can either attack higher income people and either do them

in and take their money away, which would technically reduce

inequality, but it would not do anything to help middle

and lower income people.

I am interested in helping middle income people and higher income

people who have been badly damaged by Hillary and Obama's tax and spend

policies which have given us the rottenness that has struck

since the 1960s.

This 2% growth is not an American historic average,

particularly coming out of recession, 4% under Reagan.

You are sort of assuming that the very richest Americans

do pay their income tax, but of course we learned thanks

to the New York Times and the leak about the almost $1 billion that

Trump declared as an operating loss in 1995, that Trump even though

he will not, unlike any other presidential candidates for 40

years, he will not publish his tax returns, it is very obvious

that he has not paid federal income tax for at least 18 years

out of the last 20.

I just wonder, this is personal, you care a great deal about the tax

system and you write and think about it all the time,

in the most basic terms, are you concerned about a guy

who is one of the richest Americans in your country,

who has, I am not saying it is illegal, but has avoided

paying income tax for pretty much two decades?

OK, as you may understand in the United States,

we allow loss to carry forwards.

Donald Trump has paid all the taxes he owes, if he did not,

the IRS would haul him into jail.

So, he has paid all the taxes he owes, the question is did

he like the Clintons use the losses to carry forward,

did he, like the New York Times Corporation allow losses to carry

forwards and the answer is, I would assume so, because he lost

almost $1 billion one year.

That is because you do not have income, you average out the income

over several years and if you lose money one year and make it another,

you do not say over ten years if you did not earn any net income

that you somehow owe income taxes.

You founded America's...

Or the Clintons...

One of the most important figures on the right in tax in your country,

just a simple yes or no, do you believe, should Donald Trump

publish and allow the public to see his tax returns?

I am of two minds on that.

One, I think it would be helpful to him politically.

Two, I am not sure it is a good idea for the government to insist

on looking at everyone's economic situation and publishing it...

We're running out of time and there is one big policy

issue I want to discuss with you for a moment or two

and that is immigration.

Here are words from yourself, Grover Norquist, people you say

are an asset, not a liability.

The US, is the most immigrant-friendly nation in the

world and the richest, and this is not

a coincidence, those voices that would make us less immigrant

friendly would make us less

successful, less prosperous and certainly less American.

Well, step forward Donald Trump.

He wants to massively restrict immigration,

he wants to build, quote-unquote, an impenetrable wall with Mexico.

You presumably are completely at odds with his stand on immigration.

Absolutely.

And the person who killed immigration reform in 2007

when Bush, who I supported, George W Bush, put it forward,

was named Barack Obama.

He came into the meeting, where they thought they had a deal,

and he dropped the letter down...

Let us not talk about Barack Obama.

This is essential.

You still say he represents America's best hope,

and you completely disagree with his immigration policy!

My argument is, we have two people we have to choose from, right now.

Hillary Clinton and Trump.

My argument as to who the best guy to run,

Scott Walker of Wisconsin or Rick Perry of Texas were people

that you would say would be hard to find someone in the USA more

capable or competent, both of whom would have been much

clearer on the importance of immigration.

Trump actually sometimes says the right thing in terms

of the importance of immigration.

H1B visas and things like that.

Hang on, there surely is a threshold beyond which you say to yourself,

I can longer front up and express support and positive opinion

about Donald Trump.

If I may get personal for a second, you are married to a Muslim

Palestinian-American.

Donald Trump said he would ban all Muslims entering the US.

He now says it has morphed into some sort of mega-vetting strategy.

But come what may, your wife's family are going to have massive

problems entering the United States

if he becomes president.

At what point are you prepared to say to yourself, this

man is just unacceptable?

Two things.

The alternative is Hillary Clinton, who would do, has done,

and will continue to do great damage to the country.

She would not bar Muslims from the country!

OK.

Looking at the totality of everything, and my concern

is that we have a Republican House, a Republican Senate,

if we do, if Donald Trump gets elected,

with the Republican House and a Republican Senate.

And the concerns that you raise,

and I share, on immigration and the importance of immigration

to the United States, I am very sad to see Europe go off

the deep end on these issues as well, and some of that

conversation happens in the United States.

It is unhelpful, it is destructive.

The challenge we have is to organise labour in the United States

as the number one force against immigration reform,

and has been historically for more than 100 years.

And Hillary Clinton is incapable of standing up to organised labour

on any of the issues that are important to organised labour.

We are almost out of time.

The final straight question, we have discussed the Trump

campaign, you expressed reservations about it, you certainly could not

support Hillary Clinton.

Are you telling me that you will on 8 November cast

a vote for Donald Trump, when so many people in your party

now say that that is simply a position and an act

they cannot go through with?

OK, two things.

I live in Washington, DC, I do not actually get to vote.

I am sorry, that will not be good enough for me.

You have to tell me, are you still in your heart,

prepared to say, this guy is right to be in the White House,

given the choice?

OK, with a Republican house and Senate...

I am not asking you about that.

I am asking you about the commander-in-chief!

It is critically important, because the Republican House

and Senate will discipline either Hillary or Trump,

in terms of what they are capable of doing,

and I have complete and tremendous faith in both Paul Ryan

and Mitchell McConnell in their ability.

They were able to wrestle Obama on a number of key issues and get

much better policies.

Will you vote for him, yes or no?

Would you vote for Trump, yes or no?

I will cheerfully vote for the Republicans to take

the House and Senate and I will do whatever I can to stop

Hillary Clinton from having a veto at the White House

to continue her left of centre

policies, which have been held for eight years now.

Grover Norquist, we have to leave it there.

Thank you very much for being on Hardtalk.

You got it.

Hello there.

For many places it has turned into another decidedly

chilly autumn night.

The weather has got stuck in this pattern, really.

High pressure across Scandinavia holding firm, bringing us easterly

winds across the country.

It is the places exposed to that easterly wind that are seeing more

in the way of cloud as we start Tuesday.

Still some showers.