Scott Greer, the highly respected Daily Caller alum, spoke exclusively to National File about CPAC and AFPAC, who is the most likely to beat Trump, and what Trump needs to focus on in 2020.
NATIONAL FILE: Did you attend CPAC over the last few days? What do you think of how it is as an organisation now?
GREER: Well I didn’t really go around CPAC. It’s so boring now. Like there’s nothing interesting there. They don’t have any interesting speakers. The only thing that I found really interesting was Matt Gaetz’s speech, and saying that we have to get foreign money and political interests out of our political system. It’s turned more into a carnival, it’s not anything I want to be a part of. But you have that right, you don’t have to be a part of it. But there are so many other events now around CPAC, of course we had AFPAC, National File events, and there have been some other events that have been promoting more America First nationalism rather than the stale old conservatism. CPAC is more of an inspiration for better people to come and have their events. There used to be a time where CPAC would have dissident voices and something different but those days are long gone.
NATIONAL FILE: Can you give us a quick rundown about what you spoke about at AFPAC [the America First version of CPAC]?
GREER: I spoke about the struggle for nationalism and Trumpism. There are many different factions that are saying “we’re the real Trumpists, we’re defining the right for the future.” So we had the Old Guard, who say “we’re Trumpists” but they didn’t even support Trump, and they believe in old conservative platitudes, and they’re not mixing with the times. They’re not even nationalists at all. They’re certainly not America First, and these people are like Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire and others like that. Then you have the grifters, the Trump cultists, who love Trump and smack Trump on everything that they’re doing, but they don’t even believe in the message that he ran on in 2016. Most of them didn’t even vote for him or support him. So that’s like Charlie Kirk and TPUSA.
Then a lot of my speech was dedicated to the so-called “post-liberal intellectuals,” it’s like First Things, American Affairs, and they’re trying to build a new intellectual structure for conservatism, but it’s ultimately misdirecting from what Trump run on to something else entirely different. It’s their own niche ideology, it’s not really something that connects with the American people and it’s a total misdirection. But a lot of it’s good, there’s certainly people who want a new right to emerge, but it has to be a new right that represents what Trump actually won on and represents genuine America Firsters.
NATIONAL FILE: Who would be the easiest candidate for Trump to beat in 2020 and who would be the toughest?
GREER: For the easiest, I would say it’s a tie between Buttigieg and Bernie [Buttigieg dropped out the day after this interview]. Buttigieg can’t electrify core parts of the base. Non-whites aren’t going to vote for him, they find him as like this weird, out of touch, gay man who can’t connect with them. There’s something very odd about Buttigieg, and I think he would connect with white suburbanites, but he wouldn’t connect with so many other parts of the population. I think Trump would actually have Blexit if Buttigieg was on the ticket. I think he would win 15%, and he would also win 40% of the Hispanic vote, and that would be enough for him to win the election. Bernie would be another easy one, I wouldn’t say easy, but he’s easier than Biden and Bloomberg. But he’s going to alienate white suburbanites very easily, I think he’ll alienate a lot of normal people when they actually learn about his policies.
People say “oh Bernie can win Pennsylvania!” Well, what are they going to hear about when he’s talking about fracking? It’s the same when they hear about his policies on immigration and gun control – really he’s a far-left extremist on pretty much everything. People want to say that he’s a moderate on social issues, no he’s not! Trump would play the culture war theme very well. The economy’s doing well (well we’ll see with coronavirus), but I don’t think it would really help Bernie because he wants open borders, and really you need closed borders in that case, but he would be an easier candidate than others.
The hardest candidate to beat I would say is Bloomberg. Bloomberg, if he won the nomination, he would win. He’s just buying up key demographics that the Democrats need. There would probably be a higher black turnout than in 2016 and he’s putting more money in that community. White suburbanites would probably vote for him, I think people would see him promising to keep a stable ship. He would definitely win, so that’s the biggest threat, but I don’t think Bloomberg is going to win the nomination.
NATIONAL FILE: What’s the number one issue that President Trump needs to focus on if he is re-elected?
GREER: Immigration, obviously. And he needs to do it from a legislative perspective. He’s been doing a lot of stuff over the last year through the executive branch on immigration, such as the public charge rule, he’s reducing refugee resettlement to historic lows. I mean, we haven’t had this low a number in 50 years or so, or at least since we’ve been taking in a sizeable number of refugees, it’s now down to a very low level. He’s making it harder for people to come here – there have been more denials of H1B visas and green card applications. He’s been doing a lot of good things, but we need some serious legislative proposals to go through. He needs to eliminate birthright citizenship. He needs to pass a serious immigration reduction across the board. He needs to champion the RAISE Act and get that done. One of the failures of Trump’s first term is that he focused on healthcare, that hurt him! That really was killing the Republicans, and thankfully moving on from that really helped him in 2018, but the point is, it destroyed his entire administrative agenda, so I hope he doesn’t do anything like that in his second term.
NATIONAL FILE: And finally, are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future?
GREER: I’m pretty optimistic. I’m kind of an optimist in general. I’m pretty optimistic about how the West is going in general, there are so many things that are happening that are quite exciting that we didn’t see 10 or 15 years ago. Salvini’s probably going to be Prime Minister of Italy soon, especially with the coronavirus, that will totally help him because he wants stricter border controls. All of Eastern Europe is turning in a more nationalist direction and I also think France will in the next 10 years or so. Trump is paving the way for the future of the right, so I’m pretty optimistic.
