Kellyanne Conway, Counselor To President Trump, joined Brian Kilmeade to discuss President Trump’s State of the Union address, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez citing polling that young Americans are not fond of Capitalism and receptive to more socialist ideals, President Trump not informing his generals about his plan to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and if there is progress on negotiations between democrats and republicans over border security.
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BRIAN KILMEADE, FOX RADIO ANCHOR: Joining us now to discuss that Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the President. Kellyanne welcome back.
KELLYANNE CONWAY, COUNSELOR TO THE PRESIDENT: It is so great to be with you Brian. I love your intro.
KILMEADE: Yes, I just – listen, I thought it was extremely well written as someone who has to put together speeches but not like that one, went an hour and 21 minutes. And I think it was more of a slice of life than look at me. I think it was here’s the highs of the Apollo launch, remember Normandy. Remember what brings us together fighting against kid’s cancer and by the way this is what I’m hoping to get done without creating an enemies list. So, the crafting of it I think worked to the point where I think a bunch of networks are getting panicked they have to say nice things about the President today.
CONWAY: They’re getting panicked and certainly their friends in the 2020 democratic field ought to be panicked Brian because they sat there last night, some of them, in that chamber and didn’t clap or applaud, let alone stand up when the President was talking about record low unemployment for women, that women are filling these jobs. That human trafficking is being stopped. The President actually in the First Lady’s box honored Alvin Hernandez, an ICE agent, who’s one of his expertise is trying to help these women, help these girls and women from human trafficking and sex trafficking that is happening and is a crisis, it is real and present.
Look, this is the President’s way of showing once a year he is President of the country, not head of the party, not head of just the White House staff, he is the head of our entire nation and he so loves this country that I don’t want that to be lost in our conversation about the substance and the vision and the record of accomplishments. He so loves this country that that was weaved throughout his entire address, this is somebody who wanted to recognize these American milestones of greatness of Buzz Aldrin and landing on the moon that will be 50 years this July.
Normandy and D-Day that will be 75 years in June and yet weaving together, bringing together in that box on a world stage, the man who help liberate someone else at that 75 years ago. And of course Juda Samet on his 81st birthday spent some time yesterday with he and his daughter at the White House. On his 81st birthday the whole world knows who Juda is now, he survived not once but twice, he survived the Holocaust at the age of six or seven, and then of course the Tree of Life massacre at the synagogue in Pittsburgh.
So the President actually gave his address to the stories of other people, normally Brian you have a President standing there giving a laundry list of all the pie and disguising they want to do, a couple of joyful noises here and there about bipartisanship re-unity but this President weaved together the stories of other people to try and advance his agenda and try to make us all feel better about being Americans. I’ve got to tell you the ad makers for 2020, they’re probably working over time today because the amount of the sitting on the hands, the furrowed brows, the eye rolling at the President listing out great American accomplishment and visionary things we can work on together, why wouldn’t we want to eradicate AIDS, why wouldn’t we want to try to work together to lower drug prices and get meaningful infrastructure and continue to talk to Chairman Kim while sanctions are still on him, why wouldn’t we want to stop engaging in “endless wars” not tomorrow, not next month, maybe not next year but soon enough. And the last thing I want to say to you before you pose the next question is, this President enjoyed himself and I hope everyone sees that.
KILMEADE: Yes.
CONWAY: And he absolutely enjoyed himself when the speech was being crafted, when he was learning about the different guests and their biographies and their stories. He was enjoying himself as he was going through with his sharpie, he loves this job because he loves this country and it’s one time each year that nobody else can interrupt with a stupid panel of eight people telling you what you just heard as opposed to what you just heard.
KILMEADE: Right.
CONWAY: People getting in his partisan getting in his way with the snarkyness, it’s his chance to say I love this country, I know you love this country, Washington – the people of the United States of America sent to Washington a disrupter but they also sent somebody who’s a quintessential non politician and he doesn’t talk like a politician, he talks like a business man. It was a very accessible talk and I’m so glad improbably Brian, improbably, but emphatically the most pro-life president in our lifetime, if not in the history of this country is Donald J. Trump.
KILMEADE: Right.
CONWAY: And he doesn’t hide from it, he doesn’t focus group it, he doesn’t just say it in privately and he doesn’t just use words, he’s got action. He calls on Congress to stop these late term abortions and abortions where fetus’ can feel pain that’s a pro-life president.
KILMEADE: I know, and democrats are going to be forced to answer that. Governor McAuliffe said yes, I’m not for that late term, he also said…
CONWAY: Since when? His party is.
KILMEADE: Well, right, they’re going to be – I didn’t hear it and I got to reframe it, soon they’re going to have to address it. Now I want you to hear this, the President went out of his way to say, hey by the way we’re not a socialist country.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE U.S.: Here in the United States we are alarmed by the new calls to adopt socialism in our country. Tonight, we renew our resolved that American will never be a socialist country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KILMEADE: But their talking almost everybody not named Mike Bloomberg is talking about free preschool, free college, Medicare for all for free and that is prescription for a huge bill, as well as a green policy that destroys fossil fuel. So, these are the types of things that are not market based, there’s not capitalist principles woven into that. So, did democrats not agree with that?
CONWAY: This is why the President if you go back and look at his line, he talked about America was formed on principles not “government domination and control.” That was very important because you have the President of the United States defining socialism for the rest of America and I know people want to focus on this member of Congress or that member of Congress but I mean it’s creeping throughout the entire party, it will be a theme in 2020. So, this President has to knock it down in early 2019 and you’re right, the opposite of that is the way we were founded which is free market capitalism. You’ve seen these polls as I have, over time that particularly younger generations don’t appreciate capitals and they feel like they’re more for socialism. But when you dig down in a lot of those polls and focus groups as I have, in my previous life, you find out that they don’t really understand that socialism – social sounds great.
KILMEADE: Right.
CONWAY: They don’t understand necessarily that socialism means exactly what you just described which is these budget busting measures that sound great and flowery, but would bust the budget and would be unfair to the 157 million Americans the President said are working hard and trying to get ahead in the capitalistic society. I don’t – look, I have faith, I have great faith in the wisdom of Americans, they are going to push back on this ideological leftist drift on all these policies. It is amazing to me…
KILMEADE: But it’s all ready happening on the left. It’s happening with Mike Bloomberg and Howard Schultz, they say wait a second and they’re getting blistered…
CONWAY: You know why they’re getting blistered? And it’s so ironic to me Brian, let me interject, they’re the two capitalist, they’re the two guys that have made it out of nothing. Neither of them inherited it, they made it out of nothing, successful billionaires, job creators who have also been engaged in the private insurances to further employees for decades and both say, don’t kill the private insurance.
KILMEADE: But Kelly and I want you to hear, I want you to know this whole thing and they had three of four points I want you to respond to because your previous job, you’re upholster and you understand trends. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez defended the fact – went after the President on a myriad of issues, he says the President is getting panicked and defensive, listen.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO CORTEZ: I think that he needs to do it because he feels like – he feels himself losing on the issues, every single policy proposal that we have adopted and presented to the American public has been overwhelmingly popular, even some with the majority of republican voters supporting what we’re talking about. When we talked about a 70 percent marginal tax rates on incomes over $10 million, 60 percent of American’s approve it, 70 percent of American’s believe in improved and expanded Medicare for all. A very large amount of Americans believe that we need to do something about climate change and that is an existential threat to ourselves and to our children. And so, I think he sees himself losing on the issues, he sees himself losing on the wall and the southern border and he needs to grasp at an add homonym attack. And this is his way of doing it but what we really need to realize that what is happening is that this is an issue of authoritarian regime versus democracy. And in order for him to try to dissuade or throw people off the scent of the trail, he has to really make and confuse the public.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KILMEADE: Is that what he’s trying to do, confuse the public and the stats show that she’s right?
CONWAY: No, I’ve looked over that polling and I was in polling for decades Brian. If you phrase the question so that its just feel good phraseology rather than really digging into the ideology behind it, you’re always going to high in the sky numbers. If you ask people, hey are you afraid of climate change or scientist say this or scientists say – if you don’t tell people what it’s going to cost them or what they’re going to have to sacrifice in return for her getting her way than those polls are illegitimate. And by the way, the polls don’t even matter on this because the President got elected on many of the things he talked about last night, he could not have been more clear three, two, one year ago and so now he’s just trying to make them real. Look, even Speaker Pelosi in a phone call with the President last week, which he tweeted about so I can talk about publically, she mentioned she raised infrastructure and drug pricing with him as two areas they can work on. So let’s have it, let’s ignore the ankle biters and the naysayers and those who are just finding their sea legs in the Congress and others and those who just don’t believe in working together, who don’t believe in common sense solutions to benefit this country and the Speaker knows that. Because she’s got a very disparate conference to manage here and it’s not clear that she does have control over them. Sure, she won the speakership but what did she say to the 31 democrats who represent congressional districts that Donald Trump won in 2016, what does she say to the 22 freshman, them are freshman, you see some of them on T.V., we have some of them come to the White House as say the problem solvers caucus and individually they approach us, hey we’d like to try to work together because they go home and they get an ear full. What has happening to your party, your democratic party they ask, what is happening that you’re drifting to the left? Then of course they hear from legal immigrants in their…
KILMEADE: Wow, we just – she just dropped off there for a second, we’re up against a break. Maybe we’ll come back with her if we can get a hold of her again.
(CONWAY PHONE CALL DROP)
KILMEADE: With us right now Kellyanne Conway, kind of enough to get back on the line when the earth rejected her call right before she was going to close with us. Kellyanne, what did the President say about the General coming out saying he wasn’t informed of that ahead of time? And why wouldn’t he tell the General what he wanted to do?
CONWAY: Well, the President was conferring with his generals here and across the globe but the President campaigned on this, I don’t know why everybody’s surprised that the President said this nation, a great nation will not engage in endless wars. He said it many times before, he reaffirmed it last night, if you go back to his speech about his Afghany policy, Afghanistan policy, in September of 2017, he announced it in Virginia and he said it’s not the Bush policy, it’s not the Obama policy, we’re not going to pull out tomorrow because it would hurt the wrong people but folks we’re not going to be there indefinitely forever either. It absolutely deeply disturbs the President to sign these letters where he telling another family, you know, we’re so sorry the United States of America mourns with you your son and in some cases your daughter has been killed. He goes to Walter Reed he sees the devastation…
KILMEADE: No, no, no I understand but pulling out early has people jumping out of buildings in New York City and the Pentagon.
CONWAY: But what does that mean, what does early mean? They like to define them on their own.
KILMEADE: Well, I mean the enemy doesn’t go away and we’re not really fighting in Syria and in Afghanistan it’s aiding training and supporting but in Afghanistan it was surprising because we’re in the middle of talks with the Taliban at the time.
CONWAY: Yes, and the President addressed that squarely last night. He said it squarely last night, he spent several minutes on this very topic and everybody should go watch what the President said not what partisan Senators or others from across the aisle are saying.
KILMEADE: Lastly, there’s some good news in that in looks like (INAUDIBLE) said that they’re making progress in the talks with republicans on some type of deal before the 15th but they might need a short order of a week spending to continue. What progress can you tell us about Kellyanne?
CONWAY: Well, Brian we were really happy to hear that to because the President has tried to just let the confree (ph) have their time and their space to do their job. We need a Congress that acts on immigration, they failed to do that for many decades. So the President is willing to sign something that everybody knows what’s important to him, the physical barrier the rest of the wish list that the democrats and republican share but I think if one of the up shots of last nights truly outstanding remarkable unifying call to action speeches, the confree (ph) saying you know what the President said let’s get it down, let’s get it done. So we feel great, the President said he didn’t have a lot of faith in it happening.
KILMEADE: Thanks Kellyanne.
