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00:00Let's get more analysis.
00:01Rick Perlstein joins us.
00:02He's a historian and author of the book Regenland, America's Right Turn.
00:06Rick, thank you for being with us here in France 24.
00:09We appreciate your time.
00:10What are your thoughts at this stage?
00:13It is obviously incredibly close.
00:16It's been an extraordinary campaign.
00:19I dissent from the consensus that it's close.
00:25I don't think we know if it's close or not.
00:28People don't answer their phones for polls anymore.
00:30The pollsters are basing their things on models that are very abstract and opaque.
00:36We have a history in American presidential polling of very, very bad misses, for example,
00:42in 2016.
00:44We're really only going to know maybe not even tomorrow, but in the weeks to come.
00:50We do have the ability to say with certainty that America has inched closer to authoritarian
00:58governance than it has at any time in its history, with the possible exception of the
01:03states in the South during the era of slavery and segregation.
01:07That is an interesting thing you say.
01:10You corrected me in a very nice way.
01:11I thank you for that, because I said it's close to you.
01:14You put me back in my box.
01:15Maybe it is.
01:16You did it very politely, and I appreciate that.
01:18Thank you so much.
01:19The point you just made there is really important, because you wrote a book about the right turn
01:22under Reagan.
01:23That's right.
01:24I can recall, as a younger, aspiring journalist at the time, thinking Reagan was very extreme
01:29and very right-wing, but this is a whole new definition of what we're seeing now from Donald
01:33Trump, isn't it?
01:34Right.
01:35As I write the history of this conservative movement in the Republican Party, what I see
01:41is an increasing ratchet towards authoritarianism that's really only ever gone in one direction.
01:47There's been a story that Democrats tell themselves that when Republicans lose, the
01:54scales will right themselves, and we'll return to this broadly consensual nation.
02:00Conservatives don't think of the world that way.
02:02They see the world in apocalyptic terms.
02:05They see themselves standing at Armageddon.
02:07A lot of them, in fact, are fundamentalist Christians who see the stakes as existential
02:14for humanity itself.
02:16They see Democrats as the enemy.
02:19Many of them literally use language, for example, that Democrats are demonic, that they have
02:25nothing less than the severing of the bonds of civilization itself on their minds.
02:32There are so many things that Donald Trump says, which for many people just do not add
02:36up, but for his supporters, it seems to make no difference whatsoever.
02:41Right.
02:42Because this is not a logical argument.
02:45It's not kind of the Enlightenment way of thinking where you take evidence and logic
02:50and you conclude based on those ways of cogitating.
02:56It's about feeling, right?
02:57I mean, a lot of us have been using the word fascist to describe it, and there's some debate
03:02about that.
03:03But for me, the most important reason to use this word is that the kind of campaigning
03:10Republicans do now completely encloses their voters in a information bubble.
03:17And just a great example, during the acceptance speech, Donald Trump said he was going to
03:22build an iron dome over America, kind of like Israel has.
03:25Of course, America is like a thousand times bigger than Israel.
03:30And the weapons that we would face in a war would be intercontinental ballistic missiles,
03:34not these kind of cheap rockets.
03:36So it's just a complete fantasy that he's going to protect you from everything that
03:40vexes you, that he's going to wreak vengeance on anything that harms you.
03:46And it's not a matter of spreadsheets and adding up which candidate has which position.
03:53They see the world in terms of good and evil.
03:56And we know from history that that is a very dangerous development.
04:00And we find ourselves in America on the precipice of something that could be very, very dire
04:05for our future and the world's future.
04:06Rick, thank you very much indeed.
04:08We need to leave it there.
04:09But you've given us some real food for thought as we enter the, well, obviously, we're into
04:14the final day of campaigning.
04:16Rick, I'll stand there with that analysis, a story, a man who wrote a book about Ronald
04:21Reagan, of course.
04:22At the time, many thought he was hard right, but totally redefined in terms of the position
04:29of Donald Trump on many of the issues that we are facing today.
04:33Rick, thanks again for your contribution.
04:35Great to have you on France 24.
04:36Good to be here.
04:37Bye bye.