David Frum, Former Speechwriter for US President George W Bush HARDtalk

Welcome to HARDtalk.

I'm Shaun Ley.

The Orlando murders in a gay nightclub are the worst mass

shooting in US history, and already, Hillary Clinton

and Donald Trump are clashing over the causes

on the presidential election trail.

Conservatives used to be united by their shared attitude to God,

guns and gays, confident warriors in an ideological

battle with liberals.

Orlando is another test for those beliefs.

David Frum, a lifelong conservative, campaigned for Ronald Reagan,

wrote speeches for George W Bush.

He thinks that the triumph of Trump proves the power

of conservatism is breaking up.

Should Republicans embrace change?

Or should they consider embracing Hillary Clinton?

David Frum, welcome to HARDtalk.

Thank you.

It is good to have you here.

Omar Mateen's attack may well have been motivated

by an extreme view of Islam, but he chose to commit it in a club

with a predominantly gay clientele.

What responsibility do you think rests on American conservatives

for the sort of attitudes that his actions represent?

Erm, I would think very little on American conservatives.

He seems, the killer, and I'm not going to say his name,

seems to have been motivated by a combination of extremist

Islamic ideology, very possibly his own repressed

and conflicted sexuality, and all of this made

possible by too easy access to deadly weapons.

We'll come onto the question of weapons.

But just on that point you make about his mixed motives - let me put

to you what Chase Strangio, of the American Civil Liberties

Union, said, when he heard Republican politicians

expressing their sympathies, he said, "You know what is gross -

your thoughts and prayers and Islamophobia after you created

this anti-queer climate."

Erm, you see, that is an unfortunate comment.

It's also not a very intelligent comment,

because one of the things that people on the left want to believe

is that you can have both a total embrace of multiculturalism,

and a total embrace of gay rights.

And it is actually that view that is so deeply conflicted.

I am not here to offer an easy solution or to say, go all one way.

But in all the developed world, in Europe even more

than the United States, what we have found is,

diversity means diversity.

And you discover - and Britain knows this well,

from recent reports - you discover that when you

have a lot of migration, you change or own society's

attitudes towards some things you thought

were your core values.

All Americans...

Americans may disagree about gay marriage, although decreasingly so.

I don't think anybody disagrees that gay people should be

murdered for being gay.

That would be a pretty universal view.

What about acknowledging that they may have been

murdered for being gay?

Who would deny that?

It's not a question of denial, it's a question of just not

mentioning it at all.

House Speaker Paul Ryan referrred to "the victims".

His opposite number Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat former Speaker,

referred very specifically to the fact that they were gay.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, Republican,

did not mention they were gay.

His opposite number did.

There is a very straight division between the parties,

and I wonder why Republicans find it so difficult to use that word?

Well, let me put it this way.

In context of mourning these terrible losses,

erm, if people are mourning, I just don't think it is in good

taste to say, "I do not like the way you are mourning."

Some of those people...

It was Latina night at the club, so I presume many of them were

Latino.

Many people have not found it necessary to mention that.

That does not mean they are grieving any less or are

insensitive to the dead.

I think one of the things I've advocated, one of the things

we need to think about, not instantly, but soon,

is some kind of appropriate memorialisation.

The joint project from the federal government in the state of Florida.

This is a terrible thing, and the families, I am sure it

will get worse for them.

Because grief does not fit immediately, it is

shock and then grief.

What troubles some, even Republicans, on this question,

is that by not acknowledging it, there is a sense in which it's not

something that needs to be said, and yet for them, it

DOES need to be said.

Jimmy LaSalvia, who was a Republican strategist for many years, said...

And a big Trump supporter, I may add.

OK, but...

You wouldn't acknowledge that he comes from your

shared political past?

I would not acknowledge sharing a lot

with Jimmy LaSalvia.

OK.

They ignore and reject the reality that lesbian and gay,

bisxual, transgender people, are part of life in America today.

He says, "Remember the Charleston black shootings,

as you would, last year."

He says, "GOP politicians fell over themselves to take down

the Confederate flag after that.

I doubt anything like that will happen with the gay club shooting."

Look, Jimmy was an enormous Trump supporter, and he's got his own very

complex political motives.

And here's what I was saying...

I think when you look at this horror, you see a lot

of things coming together.

There are questions about the place of gays in American society, sure.

There are questions about migration

and multiculturalism.

There are questions about guns.

And I don't like this game where you say, I'm going to reach

into the fishbowl...

Not the fishbowl, because that suggests it is random.

I am going to talk about the things that bother me.

I am not going to look at this problem as if it genuinely presented

a question to think about.

I'm going to approach it as if it is a chance to repeat a lot

of slogans that I was repeating the day before this happened.

Your views have evolved as a conservative

and as a Republican.

You've acknowledged it in print yourself on the question

of gay marriage.

I wonder if you think the party needs to move further

on this question?

That's already happening.

Gay marriage has been dealt with, but in its attitude to people

who represent perhaps a more diverse world.

You know, there is a problem with this word diverse.

That word assumes that all forms of differentness are

equally compatible.

And I think if we are going to protect the lives,

never mind the rights, of sexual minorities,

we will have to understand that other forms of diversity present

real challenges to the safety and security of those people.

As I say, more a European problem than an American problem.

For a lot of reasons, America has been more successful,

so far, although we shouldn't be arrogant,

about assimilating migrant groups - but that may not always be true.

And we shouldn't press our luck.

For sure, we are moving towards a place of...

Where not just...conservative parties accept sexual minorities.

Canadian conservatives just voted at their last convention

to accept gay marriage - that's already the law in Canada.

And I have no doubt that within four or six years,

that will be the case for Republicans as well.

You suggested in an article for Atlantic magazine back

in April that possibly, politically, conservatives might

have been exposed by this year's election campaign -

that the success of Donald Trump suggests that somebody

who was almost defiantly opposed to many conservative positions,

it suggests that actually, the conservative power base is not

what people thought it was.

Will that change attitudes in the party, do you think?

Look, American political conservatism is is a collection

of solutions to the problems of the 1970s.

And it worked.

We saw...

If you have inflation, conservatives know what to do.

If you face a challenge from the Soviet Union,

we know what to do.

If there's crime in the streets, conservatives know what to do.

But if there's no inflation, no Soviet Union and crime has been

reduced to the lowest levels in modern American history,

we are a little at loose ends.

And then you present us with a whole lot of new problems -

income stagnation, problems of acculturation,

of an increasingly diverse society.

And old ideas, it isn't that they cease to be true -

they cease to be relevant.

Politics is an exam where they keep changing the questions.

And your grandfather's answers are not going to be very helpful.

But you've got to somehow keep on board people who still feel very

passionately about those traditional solutions.

Mike Huckabee was saying, if Republicans want to lose guys

like me and a whole bunch of still God-fearing,

Bible-believing people, then go ahead - embrace things

like gay marriage and you will get the response that a lot of us

will just walk away.

Yes, but Mike Huckabee, who has endorsed Donald Trump,

finds himself supporting the least socially conservative

Republican ever.

In fact, Huckabee gives the lie to that claim.

Among the many reasons that Donald Trump is such

a politically shattering event - this is not the worst

of his offences, but it is maybe the most interesting...

No politician since Gerald Ford - no Republican nominee for president

- has been less interested in the pro-life agenda than Donald

Trump.

He is obviously completely uninterested in the anti-gay agenda,

and yet he pulls up Mike Huckabee, who would have found other

people who were 99%, but not 100% orthodox,

too heterodox, for him.

So, the very fact that Mike Huckabee can make his peace with Donald Trump

shows that what Mike Huckabee just said is not a true description even

of Mike Huckabee's actions.

One thing you said earlier in this interview, which is a fact,

is that violent crime in the United States is falling.

And yet one area where the United States seems to be

uniquely badly served is on the question of mass killings.

5% of the population, and yet it has a third

of the mass killings - killings of more than four people

at any one time - in the world.

Last major attempt to restrict gun control three years ago

foundered in the Senate.

Why did it founder?

Because of Republicans.

Yeah, look...

I am a believer in tougher gun laws.

But I do not hold out a lot of hope that tougher gun laws would stop

the mass killing problem.

That's not what they are for.

They have worked elsewhere.

Look at Australia.

It had four mass killings in the space of less than a decade.

It tightened gun controls - has not had a single mass

shooting in 20 years.

It may just have been lucky, but one begins to think

there's a connection.

If you are an island nation, which Australia basically is...

A big island.

..With a very strong central state, and you are able to round up

weapons that are already in people's hands, then yes.

None of that is going to be possible in the United States.

It would be better if the United States had

more federal strength, in this respect...

No, but...

Let's use gun control to solve the problem that gun

control can actually solve.

Where it will make a real difference is with suicide prevention

and the reduction in our terrible rate of lethal accidents.

Every day there is a story about some family where a gun has

been purchased for casual reasons, imagining that it is for

self-defence, somebody meant to do well by his wife or his girlfriend

and their children, he bought a gun to protect them against a probably

imaginary danger, and then he didn't secure the gun properly,

and one of the toddlers ends up dead.

That is a situation where stricter laws would make a difference.

But a determined murderer is going to be able to get weapons,

as we saw in Paris and Norway.

And Norway has tough gun laws.

Sure, but Breivik, a terrible example,

but it was pretty much an exception.

It does not happen as routinely as in the US.

July 2012, 12 people in a cinema in Aurora.

August 2012 - seven people at a Sikh temple in Milwaukee.

September 2012 - five killed in Minneapolis.

December 2012, Sandy Hook, 20 children, six teachers,

in one incident.

Are you saying none of that could have

been prevented?

No!

I know the numbers.

I would say, don't hold out false hopes to people.

As someone who advocates...

If I were to say to Americans, listen to me, do it my way,

and you'll see five years from now, you'll have a lot fewer mass

shootings, I will probably be proven wrong.

What I know I can deliver is fewer teen suicides and fewer tragic

accidents involving small children.

What is strange is that the Republican party seems to have

this position that it doesn't want to move on gun control,

and yet public opinion seems to have moved already.

There are some interesting statistics, some research

last summer found that 81% of Republicans and 79% of Democrats,

this is voters, supported preventing the mentally ill from buying guns.

85% of all voters supported background checks at gun shows

and for private sales.

70% backed the creation of a federal database to track sales.

This is not controversial stuff any more.

No, but that...

You are choosing the wrong numbers.

The weird thing about American life is that as crime has declined,

so has gun ownership.

In the early 1960s, about half of American households had a gun.

Today only about one third - that is mostly because of

the disappearance of long guns as fewer Americans hunt.

Fewer Americans hunt in a year than go to the ballet.

As hunting has gone out of style, Americans are less likely

to own long guns, but there are more and more handguns,

and they're in fewer and fewer hands.

We've seen that opposition to the actual gun control measures,

that is stronger than it used to be.

In this way, Congress really is tracking public opinion.

You are saying Republicans are still in contact

with public opinion on this?

Unfortunately, yes.

Let me say one thing about the mentally ill.

Obviously you want to prevent the mentally ill from getting guns,

but who are the mentally ill?

That is not a legal category.

And there is no way of identifying in advance.

The problem is that people buy guns when they are not mentally ill,

and then something goes wrong in their lives,

they become mentally ail and they've still got the same gun.

OK, but you've got specific measures that were proposed three years ago.

42 Republicans and four Democrats voted against

expanding background checks.

60 Senators voted against a ban on assault weapons,

which the United States used to have for 10 years.

And Omar Mateen was carrying an assault weapon, which allowed him

to maximise the casualties, which a handgun would not have done.

As the gun people will tell you - an assault weapon is a design

category, it is not a category of firearm.

You are saying that the law, there would be loopholes?

Here is what I think we should do.

I think we should do with guns what we do with driving, which is,

between the time you decide you want a gun and when you get a gun,

there should be a lot of paperwork and delay.

What that would mean is, you weed out the people

who are not good at life.

And you eliminate the casual decision to get a gun

because you think there may be somebody out there trying to...

That guy who is not going to store it properly in a house

with small children - just put some obstacles in his way.

Meanwhile...

But the determined murderer will alas get weapons.

The way you stop the determined massmurderer, that is a case

where the ban on the weapons will not help much in

the American context, which is different from Australia.

Others disagree.

Senator Chris Murphy thinks that Congress has become complicit

in these murders, because it hasn't done anything.

When you're a politician, people want to think

that there is a magic lever that you can pull.

One of the great public policy successes across the developed

world is the reduction in automobile fatalities.

It is dramatic what has happened in the past generation.

That is not becuase we did one magic thing, that some nefarious industry

had been obstructing.

Seat belts helped, true, so did the airbags, so did different

road standards, better cars, making it more difficult

for 17-year-olds to get drivers licenses.

There's now typically three levels of licensing.

Sure.

But you can do multiple things or you can do nothing.

And on gun control, it seems the United States has done nothing.

And yet the country is a lot safer than it was.

Unless you happen to be a victim of a mass shooting,

like those people in Orlando.

That...

But your chance of being murdered is much less.

There's one...

I am sure that is consolation for the families.

I am not offering it as a consolation, I'm

offering it as a guide to thinking in a useful way.

People in politics are judged not by their good intentions

or their ability to project emotions on the camera.

They are judged by their ability to deliver results.

If I have something, and it makes a great speech,

but you do it and it is not better, then it is a failure.

Waht is your response to Jeh Johnson, the secretary

for Homeland Security, who said on Tuesday,

"There should be meaningful and responsible gun control.

It is a matter of homeland security."

Surely in that context, given how passionate Republicans

are about securing America against terrorism,

don't Republicans have to respond to that?

No, they don't.

If you have the kinds of gun control that other countries have,

you will see, I predict, a reduction in teen suicides

in the United States, a reduction in fatal accidents.

But I don't know that you will see a reduction in mass shootings,

because they are driven by a copycat element, that's for sure,

once it's in the cultural mind.

They are driven by the self-radicalisation on the Internet.

And whatever you do, there will be a lot of guns around

in the United States for a long time.

Do you think it is a mistake of President Obama not to use

the phrase "radical Islam"?

No, I understand why he does it.

I think he leans over a little too...

Here's what is a mistake.

This is a thing that really...

Do you remember the case of the clock boy?

Who made in effect a toy bomb?

And he was not a good student as he was represented to be -

his father was a major Sudanese politician with ambitions

of his own, and he made a toy bomb and he brought it to school.

The school reacted very negatively and probably excessively.

They handcuffed him - almost certainly not necessary.

The president then invited him to the White House and made him

a victim of bigotry in the nation's eyes.

When that happens, now you are the security company that

employed the Orlando shooter, and he's muttering and fulminating

and threatening people, and people begin to tell you,

and you think, "Do I want to be the next villain

of the next clock boy story?"

I think in this time when Islamic terrorism is a real phenomenon,

obviously involving a minority of people who are Muslim...

Not forgetting that many, many Muslims working in national

security and peace officering the army...

I think you want to say to people, "If you make a mistake

in the way of over-vigilance, we're not going to treat

you like a bigot."

Donald Trump, who is the presumptive leader

of the Republican Party, has a plan...

Presumptive presidential nominee - it's a very

different thing.

OK.

Well, he's the nearest thing the party would have,

I suppose, in the course of a presidential election campaign.

I don't salute him.

I take your correction.

He said, "We are importing radical Islamic terrorism into the West

through a failed immigration system.

I will suspend immigration from areas of the world

where there is a proven history of terrorism

against the United States, against Europe or our allies,

until we understand how to end these threats."

I value our Belgian allies and friends and I would hate to see

migration from Belgium cut off to the United States.

Look, where do people like Donald Trump come from?

I have zero sympathy for him and the outrageous and obnoxious

and foolish things he says.

But he is a product also of extreme euphemism on the other side.

When responsible leaders...

So it is the Democrats' fault?

No, it is not a partisan point.

This is not just an American problem.

When responsible leaders will not deal with real problems

in responsible ways.

You know, if anybody's to blame...

Angela Merkel - when you do things like that, when you say,

"Nobody but the fascists will address this problem,"

the voters will say, "Who are these fascists

of whom you speak, and what is their phone number?"

It is the job of responsible leaders to deny the issues

to the Donald Trumps of the world, because otherwise you get

the Donald Trumps of the world, because the problems are real.

You wrote recently that to regain respect after their humiliation

by Trump, those who regard themselves as true conservatives

will have to mount a show of force - how do they do that?

Well, true conservatives here is a term of art.

I put the capital C and the capital T.

That is...

Those people who are always telling you how ideologically pure they are.

One thing that there was a lot of talk about,

and I'm surprised it did not happen, was that there would be

an ideologically pure conservative primary challenge,

or independent run, with an idea of knocking away some electoral

votes from Donald Trump, to punish the party -

but that has not happened.

And...

So that has not happened - what CAN happen?

You have said YOU can't support him.

I think there will be some mayhem at the convention,

some attempt to write some things into the Republican platform that

Trump will find embarrassing, including such things as,

if you get public money for your campaign, you can't use it

to repay the loans on your campaign.

I think that may be about to happen.

He did not fund it, he lent $30 million to the campaign,

which he can ill afford.

Fine.

But he would still be the Republican candidate for president.

He would.

So what happens now?

He goes on to lose pretty badly.

And what happens to people like you - can you vote for him?

Can I vote for hiom?

No, I won't vote for him.

So, do you vote for Hillary?

Er, who exactly I vote for - I have to think about.

How exactly I express...

I mean, the election is not up to me.

But it is up to hundreds of thousands of people like you.

Erm, so, I will have to do some soul searching as to exactly how

on the ballot I express my view.

But I've been...

Trouble is, if you do anything but vote for Hillary Clinton,

all you do is make it easier for him to get in.

An abstention effectively is meaningless.

I live in the District of Columbia, so...

It's going to be pretty darn unanimous in my...

You know, our electoral votes, it is a wholly expressive act.

But the dilemma facing people like you in other

states is a real one.

DC is not treated like a state - in the States of the Union

of the United States.

Because our elections are so long, we have a lot of time to think

about what is the right thing to do, and have a lot of

time to express it.

But I have been very clear, the danger of Donald Trump is not

just, he would be a bad president, not just that he seems not

to have the impulse control or the understanding of American

institutions necessary.

But the danger is, because in a weird way

on the issues, to the flimsy, minimal extent he cares

about issues, because he has been more moderate than a lot

of the previous leaders, because he's not an ideological

conservative, if he fails as badly as it looks like he will,

he will hurt the Republican Party and hurt the chances of reform.

One thing that is very likely to happen -

I do not predict this, but it is a major possibility -

is that Republicans will say, "This shows we need to be

even more doctrinaire.

We need to change our issues stance and find a responsible person.

In the end, would Hillary Clinton be a better president or a less worse

president than Donald Trump?

I am pretty confident she would not unintentionally start

a nuclear war - so that's a big thing right there.

But the problems with Hillary Clinton are quite serious.

There is the problem of integrity, of the way the Clinton

people have raised money.

They have in her own...

It is maybe a less extreme problem than Donald Trump,

but Bill and Hillary Clinton together have really hacked at some

of the foundational ideas of how American politicians should behave,

how they raise money, what kinds of rewards are acceptable

to the people who give you money.

They are a very disturbing group, too, and that is why this

is all so agonising.

David Frum, thank you very much for being

with us on HARDtalk.

Thank you.