Monica Crowley: 'This Was A Change Election'
Below are the video and a transcript to Monica Crowley's speech at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s 2016 Restoration Weekend on Nov. 10th-13th at the Breakers Resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
Transcript:
Finally, we have a Restoration Weekend that lives up to its name. Mike, thank you very much for that great introduction. I want to start by thanking David Horowitz, who never falters and he never fails us ever. Even though today is a pretty sunny day for all of us in this room, David Horowitz has never failed us even in our darkest moments. So David, I want to thank you very much for putting this all together and for having me here tonight, and Elizabeth Ruiz. Where is she? She is a goddess. She is a goddess and she makes all of this magic happen. Elizabeth, thank you so much. Well, we have finally made it through our detour through the desert lead by a most improbable political Moses and here we are with President-elect Donald J. Trump. I have been to so many of these Restoration Weekends, and they're usually the weekend after the election and after nine Restoration Weekends where we've been crying, tonight we're going to have some fun because everybody in this room helped make it happen. Every single one of us did this.
I want to start with two quick anecdotes. About two weeks after Donald Trump came down that escalator in New York in Trump Tower and announced his candidacy, he was met with derision and mocking and laughter, but not by me because I saw something that day, and I wasn't quite sure what I was seeing, but the impression stuck with me. And about two weeks after his announcement everybody was still having a good laugh, not taking it seriously, and I went on national television and I went on national radio with Don Imus, who was yucking it up and I said three things: Stop laughing, do not underestimate him, he can pull the whole thing off. And that shut them all up, including by the way, Bill O'Reilly, which I think was the only time anybody has ever rendered Bill O'Reilly speechless. All of the derision, all of the laughter, all of the mocking of Donald Trump, I saw it all happening, but what I saw overrode their reactions. It overrode traditional models and analysis because what I saw was that the man was different, the country was different, the moment was different and the feeling was different.
About a week or so after that, I went to an event that was attended by card-carrying members of the global elite, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Mark Zuckerberg, you get the picture, and I had a major Hollywood power player come up to me, and, again, this is about 3 weeks after Trump announced and I had already gone public saying he can pull the whole thing off. And this man came up to me and I got the sympathetic gaze, I got the condescending tap on the forearm and then I got the equally condescending Monica, you're such a smart girl. You can't possibly be for Donald Trump. In that moment, I had a decision to make and my decision was not to run away from or apologize for or explain my support for Donald Trump. I decided in that moment to own my support for Donald Trump and so I leaned into him and I said, "Are you kidding me? I freaking love Donald Trump." The operative word there being "freaking." I freaking love Donald Trump and if I had a thousand votes I'd case all one thousand for Donald Trump, and do you know it worked? To my great surprise, it worked because it completely disarmed him and he backed off and he said, "Oh no, no, no, don't get me wrong. I hate her. I just don't know that I can get with Donald Trump." Well, in the end, we didn't need his vote because enough Americans got with Donald Trump and owned their support for him that he is now the president-elect of the United States.
What we have seen this week is the most astonishing political story of our lifetimes, maybe ever in the history of the Republic. This brash billionaire who has never done this before. Think about this. This man has never done this before. He had basically no money relative to Mrs. Clinton, who had about $2 billion at her disposal. He ran a skeletal campaign and he just beat the most fearsome, brutal, well-funded and ruthless political machine in a generation. He also beat the sitting president of the United States and just about everybody's expectations except mine. A couple of weeks ago, I went on Special Report with Brett Baier and I think I was the first one to identify the monolithic opposition Donald Trump has faced. He was up against the president of the United States, the White House, Mrs. Clinton, her campaign, the Democratic Party, the Republican establishment, the Wall Street Journal, the international community, the United Nations and the mainstream media. Given that wall of opposition, I remember saying to Brett, if he wins this thing this will be a straight-up miracle, and you know what? On Tuesday the American people delivered that miracle. And when I say miracle I actually really do mean that word. I think there was a divine intervention here, and I used to joke that he's going to need divine intervention, but I really sort of see the hand of God in this because I really do believe that this week God gave this country a second chance. He needed a hand so all of us stepped up to the plate, but we got our second chance.
I was on Fox News all election night and I remember because I'd been with Trump from the beginning and took a lot of slings and arrows, a lot of heat for that, as so many in this room have, when they were calling the presidency for Donald Trump, and we had a screen behind us where we could watch him walk out, and he looked so emotional. I got emotional and I started to tear up, and I'm trying to be super professional. And I remember looking over at Megan Kelly and she was going to come to me and I went like this -- no, Megyn, not yet because, honestly as a citizen, as somebody who cares and loves my country so much, I wanted to be able to enjoy that moment even though I was on national TV. I wanted as much of a private moment as I could possibly get to absorb the magnitude of what was happening. Earlier that night when we were doing some pregame analysis, I said that this election had the potential to be a realigning election because there were so many cross currents underway that nobody had a handle on what was going to happen, not Donald Trump, even though he was riding the tiger of this new energy and this new realignment. Mrs. Clinton certainly didn't have a handle on it. Nobody did. Just like in the UK with the Brexit vote, nobody has a handle on what is happening across the Western world. So I made that point and I also made the point in front of some famous pollsters like Doug Schoen and Karl Rove and some others who were sitting there that all of our past reliably predicative models may not work this time. They may not be so reliable this time, and I could sort of see the back of the hand with what I was saying, and guess what? Once again, Monica turned out to be correct.
Mrs. Clinton's challenge was to try to recreate the Obama coalition that delivered President Obama election and reelection, that involved high turnout of minorities, blacks, Latinos and Millennials, and if she couldn't recreate his coalition then she needed to create a new one of her own by turning out waves of women voters in particular, and in the end she couldn't do it. And the reason she couldn't do it -- and I always say the problem with Hillary Clinton is Hillary Clinton. She had a massive corruption problem. She had an honesty and trustworthy problem. She had a big likability problem, but maybe most importantly, Mrs. Clinton never established a clear vision of where she wanted to take the country or a compelling rationale for her candidacy beyond just "I'm a woman and it's my turn." Well, it turns out that that didn't persuade enough voters for her. Donald Trump comes on the screen. He was the only Republican who could have pulled this off. The only one. There were a lot of talented Republicans in this race and I know some of them. I respect them all, but none of them could have done what he did. He had a message of economic populism, law and order, strong national defense, and what was just as critical was his message of defeating the corrupt rigged system, and we now know thanks to WikiLeaks and other sources how deeply corrupt the system was and is. Donald Trump came on the scene and promised to smash the existing order, which those on the right and the left both wanted to see. Remember the first one with that message was Bernie Sanders about the corrupt system. This is what I mean about the cross-currents that have defined this year and this election and it turns out that message convinced most Republicans, but certainly convinced enough Democrats, independents and undecided voters to win him this thing.
This was a change election. For a long time, as far as I can remember, the polls showed that about 70 percent of the American people believed that the country was on the wrong track. That advantaged Donald Trump. Mrs. Clinton never quite grasped that because she has lived in her global elitist bubble for at least the last 2025 years. She ran proudly as a status quo global elitist at a time when those things were being roundly rejected across the Western world. The other thing we know for sure is that the American people went into total revolt against the protected class, the bipartisan ruling class. This was a revolt against both sides that have for decades now been more interested in their own power, their own influence, their own moneymaking ability then the rest of us. I've said this for a long time, but I'm not unique in this Peggy Noonan has written beautifully about this and others have as well, that the split in the country, and frankly across the West, is less left-right, conservative-liberal, Republic-Democrat, than it is the elites versus everyone else. The global elites, of which Mrs. Clinton is a card-carrying member, inflict these policies, rules and regulations on the rest of us. They don't have to live by them. They go to their houses in Chappaqua and Georgetown and in Paris and London. They get in their limos and they drive off and the rest of us have to live with the consequences, whether it's a crappy economy with no job creation, whether it's massive waves of illegal immigration and, in particular, now with the refugee resettlement program, which has been going on for a long time under Barack Obama and has been accelerated now. Waves of Muslim immigrants who refuse to assimilate and inflict all kinds of threats on your national security from within. We're the ones that have to suffer those consequences. The elites don't.
What you saw with Brexit, what you saw on Tuesday was the final straw for the American people. For the British people, they said enough. The unprotected class rose up and said we finally recognize that the ultimate power rests with us. Hasta la vista, baby. So let's talk a little bit about Mr. Trump. His movement is real and it's going to last for a very long time. If he is successful in office, which I believe he will be. I think he's going to surprise a lot of people and be a great president. His whole rationale for running was that he didn't need the job. He said, "I'm fabulously rich. True. I have a great business. True. And I have a fabulous family. True. I don't need this job. This is not a vanity run for me. I'm doing this for the American people and for the future of the country." That was the underpinning of his message and what you saw with what happened across the industrial Rust Belt in the Midwest, flipping these states, is a reception to that economic message of populism, of course, and the bad trade deals that disadvantage the middle and working classes. NAFTA, for example, but also illegal immigration. The things that directly affected their livelihoods. Of course, they responded to that. But I have also said that the movement that Donald Trump is leading did not begin with Donald Trump.
It actually began in 2009. What you're seeing is the latest iteration of the Tea Party movement. Normal, everyday hardworking American taxpayers, the American people who simply wanted their country back from the clutches of the far left. It started in 2009 as a result of Obama's radicalism, on the economy, massive spending and so on. Obamacare drove it as well. What you're seeing today is the Tea Party 2.0 because after Obama weaponized the Internal Revenue Service against the Tea Party it went into sort of a shadow of its self, understandably. But then it evolved and it came back this week with a vengeance. Donald Trump's appeal is not ideological and for a lot of conservatives in this room I know perhaps some of us have struggled with that because he's not a classic conservative. His appeal is attitudinal. It is not ideological. He actually ran the first 21st Century post-ideological campaign and I know that that did bother a lot of conservatives, but think about it this way: Donald Trump was selling strength. He projected authority and confidence, which are things that are necessary but not sufficient for a winning candidate. He also had a very powerful and winning message of restoring America's great military and economic, cultural and political strength, summed up in his brilliant short slogan make "American great again," which in and of itself was brilliant. The American people across party lines who elected Donald Trump had had enough of being lectured to by the establishment elites. They were tired of losing with losers. I know I was. I was really sick and tired of having the elites tell me I had to support this candidate because if we went with somebody outside the box we would lose the general election. Well, now we know that that's not true. And by the way, my first vote for president, and I don't want to put a date on myself here, but was for George H.W. Brush in 1992 and this vote this week was actually the first one I felt genuinely excited to cast.
By the way, I vote in New York City, which is a harrowing experience regardless of what party you're voting for. Two hours in line in Manhattan wrapped all the way around 57th Street. Charlie Rose, by the way, we talk about how Donald Trump might govern. Nobody really knows because again he's never done this before, but when you think about our conservative principles that we cherish so much and then you think about the waves of conservatives and so many others who voted for him, it occurred to me that nobody really cared that he once donated to the Clintons or supported government healthcare or identified as a Democrat back in the day. His supporters only cared that he was talking tough on the issues that directly affected them and the life and security of the nation, illegal immigration, the border, the Islamic threat, trade deals that so disadvantage the working class, job loss, stagnant wages. Just anecdotally, I can't tell you how many people over the last year and a half since I went public with my support of him stopped me on the street in New York, which is another harrowing experience. I never know what's going to happen there. But all these years in living in Manhattan I only had one bad experience. One guy probably about 15 years ago, maybe the height of the Iraq war, whenever that was, stopped me on the street and screamed, "Monica Crowley! Fascist!" I was like, "Thank you. Have a nice day. Have a nice day." So many people over the last year and a half stopped me on the street to tell me they were voting for Donald Trump and most of them whispered it. "Monica, I like Donald Trump." And I would say, "Why are you whispering?" And they would say, "Because it's Donald Trump and we're in New York." So I said, "Own it like I do, baby. Own it." So many lifetime Democrats, union guys, doormen, that's why I knew that there was something bigger going on out there. In fact, I had one cab driver who recognized me on Lexington Avenue, this was maybe 8 or 9 months ago, and he slammed on his brakes and he rolled down the window and he said, "Monica Crowley, I love you." And I was like, "Oh, thank you," and he said, "But I love Donald Trump more. I'm voting Trump." And he took off. That's when I kind of had a sense that something bigger was going on here.
Donald Trump spoke directly to them, the people who have felt so ignored and dismissed and mocked by their own leadership on the Republican side, certainly by the Democratic leadership, by the mainstream media. All the elites in this country have given them the back of their hands and Donald Trump said, "I might be a billionaire, but I'm one of you." I'm one of you. The trucker hat right? The McDonald's. He's on his plane and he's eating cheeseburgers. The guy talks like a guy from Queens because he's a guy from Queens. That was a critical part of his success, raw authenticity. Sometimes the rawness got him into a bit of trouble and I'd have to go on TV and explain it, but that is an incredibly powerful thing. Most politicians don't have it. Mrs. Clinton certainly didn't. She's a contrived hot mess not even that hot. Because Donald Trump wasn't a politician he said, "Take it or leave it. This is me." That kind of raw authenticity is something that money cannot buy and you know what? It delivers something else that money cannot buy, which is an emotional bond with voters. Most people think of voting as an intellectual act, right? We think about the candidates. We think about the issues. We think about the platforms. All true. But just as important as the intellectual component is the emotional one. People vote with their hearts and what Donald Trump established was a pull on the heart. That's something you cannot manufacture. That is a once-in-a-lifetime leader.
Every time Donald Trump was attacked, which was often, the emotional bond would kick in for him. I wrote about this in my column in the Washington Times. I found it a fascinating thing to behold because most of the time, who cares about your politicians, right? I mean they lie, they cheat, right? They've got private servers. Donald Trump, every time he was attacked, his supporters, which was an ever-growing base of people, rode to his rescue. They ended up forming a protective shield around him because they looked at him as their fearless champion. Their underdog and they were going to do everything they can and could to protect him. This was a fascinating paradox. The tough guy was regarded as something of a political Bambi right? And because the tough guy was regarded as a political Bambi his supporters felt that he deserved their sacrifice and their protection. That was a remarkable thing to behold. Remember when he said early in his campaign, "Hey, I could go out on Fifth Avenue, shoot somebody and not lose a single vote"? That's what he was pointing to in a less graceful way than I just did. That emotional bond did prove to be unbreakable and again that's something that money cannot buy. Finally, there was something else at play here, and it's a theme that I've written about a lot, and in fact I talked to some of you tonight about the theme of happy warrior, which is a phrase that I love so much I put it in the title of my last book. Donald Trump was always at his strongest when he was a happy warrior, when he was taking on the challenge of restoring America with joy and with passion and some levity too. He tended to lose ground when he became angry and defensive and self-referential. That's when he went down the rabbit holes, but this is generally true of most candidates because most people want to see positivity and not negativity reflected back to them. It's also rooted in the very DNA of America, which has always been an optimistic forward-looking country even in our darkest days. So Americans always gravitate toward the candidates that reflect that national disposition.
Happy warriors tend to succeed because when the difficult times inevitably come the crap hits the fan always at some point. Their sunny temperaments deliver something of a reservoir of good will. Negative candidates don't have that. Happy warrior is always associated with Ronald Reagan and now I think if Donald Trump continues this mission with joy and cheer, I think it will also be associated with him, but I also want to just close with this concept of happy warrior for everybody in this room and everybody across this great country who voted for Donald Trump because going forward the left is going to make his life a living hell. They've already started. Now they sent waves of useful idiots into the streets of New York and bunch of other cities over the last couple of days. It has heartened me to see that those protests, which were all staged like Occupy Wall Street was staged and funded by George Soros and Black Lives Matter and the whole thing -- it's all bogus. But I was heartened to see that they fell flat. Nobody's into them anymore. The reason nobody is into them anymore is because under 8 years of Obama the left had the biggest microphone in the world. They had the president of the United States, so when you have the presidency it amplifies your numbers. It amplifies your message, but it's deceptive because this very, very narrow band of radical fringe maniacs on the left make a lot of noise, but as soon as they don't have the White House they're not going to have the influence, traction and power that they had when their champion was in the White House. Now it's our turn. Make no mistake about it. This is David Horowitz's life's work. We still in a war for the nation's future. Do not think for one second because we've got the White House, the Senate and the House that the left is going to go away. In fact, no, the exact opposite. They are going to double down on their efforts to destroy this presidency, try to take down our movement, try to take down our energy, trying to dispirit us, trying to wreck the agenda.
Don't let your guard down for one second. The work of the Freedom Center is more important than ever. Everybody needs to stay strong and tough in the years ahead in order to turn this around. Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama, the Democrats and the left, it's not like they woke up on Wednesday and went, "We lost all right, bye. We're going to go to the Caribbean for the next 4 years." I wish they would go to the Caribbean for the next 4 years, but they won't. They are obsessed with redistributing wealth. They are obsessed with the destruction of economic and personal freedom, redistributing our power and our wealth globally as well as internal all to end American exceptionalism. They're not going to stop and their efforts, by the way, have already made the unthinkable, like, everyday events right? The idea that the U.S. is careening toward $20 trillion in debt, the fact that our debt had been downgraded in the United States, socialized medicine law, historically weak economic growth and low labor participation rates all the new normal, that terrorist regimes would proceed unimpeded toward nuclear weapons, tin pot tyrants would thumb their noses at the United States and that we would spurn our closest allies while strengthening our most dangerous enemies -- all unthinkable 9 years ago, the new normal today.
The left has really done a number on this country. This week the American people said, "No more." So as we move forward with our new president I think we all have to be happy warriors in this effort and we all have to be extremely tough and extremely relentless in defending traditional American values because those values are worthy of a passionate defense. American power is something to be celebrated not ashamed of and the best way to take on this mission is to do it with good cheer and integrity and faith in its success. We need people today who are like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and we can all take on that role. Donald Trump is their rightful heir, and I have no doubt that he is going to live up to their grand tradition. Today, we all need to be unequivocal, unapologetic champions for this country. Don't be afraid. Own it like I did last year. Own it. We proved this week that the great silent majority still exists. My great fear was after 8 years of Obama that he so changed the nature of this country and pushed us past the tipping point that the great silent majority no longer existed. Well, this week it was silent no more. In fact, it roared and now we the great silent majority have our best and most fearful champion in Donald Trump. Now we also have a new positive attitude right? We've got a new policy environment which is going to make the American rebound possible and breathtaking to behold. Trump is going to lead the way of course, but he's going to be supported by all of us joyfully taking on this mission. I for one cannot wait for the adventure of the American restoration to begin. Guys, we are the cavalry. Let's roll. Thank you so much. God bless you and God bless Donald Trump and God bless this great country. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.
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David Horowitz is founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center (formerly the Center for the Study of Popular Culture), FrontPage Mag, and author of many books and pamphlets published over the last twenty years. Horowitz was a left-minded radical who transitioned over his life into a conservative. Yet despite the effort of the left "to deprecate and diminish him, Horowitz has succeeded in his main task of exposing the left's agenda and decoding the way it seeks to control American culture and politics." (The Life and Work of David Horowitz) He is a Contributing Author of the ARRA News Service and also shared article on Breitbart.com.
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