The FRONTLINE Interviews
Frank Luntz
Republican Pollster
Frank Luntz is a strategist and pollster who has worked on behalf of the Republican Party for nearly three decades.
This is a transcript of an interview with FRONTLINE’s Michael Kirk conducted on June 6, 2019. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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Rejecting the Republican “Autopsy”
So it’s the 2013-2014 post-“autopsy.”Almost bipartisan immigration bill moves out of the Senate and heading for the House.That’s what’s happening in the environment where I’m going to ask you this question.Part of the centerpiece of this film is [Steve] Bannon, [Jeff] Sessions and [Stephen] Miller, sitting at Breitbart thinking they’ve identified a different way for the Republican Party to go.Tell me what they think they see as a way of changing what the Republicans are doing.
The strangest aspect for me of what happened with immigration is that I was probably spending about 20 or 25% of my time with the Democrats.I don’t really know what’s going on with the most conservative members, the most hostile members of the Republican Party, because my life was spent trying to achieve some sort of compromise.I was very active in presenting language to both sides, although tragically not at the same time.
I think that we could have gotten it done.We could have found an agreement that would have had the border security that the Republicans desperately needed and the DREAM [Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors] Act and DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] that the Democrats insisted on, as well as other changes; he verifies some different components.There was a move and a movement to get it done.So I don’t know what was going on with the far right because I wasn’t part of it, and I don’t know what was going on with the far left because they wouldn’t talk to me.But everybody else was, and everybody else was saying: “What can we do?We’ll give you what you absolutely need.Can you give us what we absolutely need?And then how do we survive the pressure from the left and the right?”And that was really the issue.
What language, what policies, and what tone do we take?Because this was the beginning of the great communication divide.Up to that point, it was all about policy.When I got involved, it started to be about tone and language, and I’ll give you an example.Democrats were all about compassion: How do we help these people?They’re human beings like we are.They have challenges; they have families; they’re under so much pressure.How do we bring them out of the shadows?It’s all about the heart.
The Republican communication was about the Constitution, about rule of law, all about the mind;that you have to—there’s a process, and you must follow it, and if you don’t, then we have no sympathy for you, because you broke the law.
The Democrats would say—would talk about help.The Republicans would talk about rule of law.And it’s not as insignificant as it sounds, because if the tone is different, then you are agitating the people you need to win over when your tone isn’t all-encompassing, when it isn’t universal.And that, for me, was one of the greatest challenges of that entire immigration debate.It actually wasn’t just about policy.It was also—and not just about language.It was also about tone.
But it was also about politics, because the Republicans were doing something post-autopsy that they hadn’t done before, which was try to embrace this to broaden their base.And the other side, the Republican right, the Bannon-Sessions-Miller crowd, were saying, “No, no, no, there’s a base out there of people who are different than the Republican establishment is trying to appeal to.”Who is that base?What was that base?
This is not an issue of Republican establishment, because there were members like [Reps.] Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan and the Republicans out in California who knew that you could not continue without solving this issue; that it was a—it was a mandate for the country, not just for the election.And you had Democrats who were simply tired of paying lip service to immigration reform; that they actually wanted to get something done.
Yeah, there were plenty of politicians that were only focused on how you could score points.But this time—and I saw it, and I heard it, and I presented to them.And for one brief, shining moment, it actually felt good, because people were trying to get something done for the right reasons.And I actually thought, just maybe we can thread a needle or find a four-leaf clover or in some way just get this done—you know, 220 votes in the House, 51 votes in the Senate; that there were enough people who were willing to do the right thing because there were so many people behind the scenes that no one realizes that were trying to do the right thing.
Defeating Eric Cantor
What happened?
Eric Cantor’s loss, and I’ll never forget this, because I was moderating a focus group that night.I had a bunch of Washingtonians, some major Washingtonians sitting behind the mirror, and they ran the numbers in to me.… They run me in a note saying Eric Cantor’s down by 17, 18 points.And I scrunched it up, threw it, and I said: “F--- you.Get out of here.”And they said, “We’re not kidding.”And I said: “And neither am I. Get out of here.”And I continue moderating for another 10 or 15 minutes.And they come back in, and I look at the eyes of the gentleman who’s handing me the note.And I said, “You’re not kidding.”He said, “Read it.”And it said that Cantor had been projected to lose.And my first thought was to Eric, because I really liked him.And my second thought was, well, there goes immigration, because they’re going to make his election about immigration.They’re going to say the Republicans voted against him because of immigration, and it’s over.
And the night that Eric Cantor lost his primary, that was the night that the immigration compromise died.And that may have been the last night that our democracy functioned.
What did they do to Cantor to beat him?
We looked at that seat.Eric Cantor did not lose because of immigration.That was the deciding factor for 2% of the Republican primary.But the opponents of immigration used his loss to say if you vote for this compromise, the same thing’s going to happen to you.Cantor’s loss scared the living hell out of the Republican incumbents.Some people call them establishment, but it was left, right.It didn’t matter, because there are plenty of conservatives who supported a compromise on immigration that were not part of the establishment, including some people who are in the White House today.
But they used this to communicate to every Republican, “This is the cost of your vote for a compromise.”And too many Republicans believed it.
The Trump Campaign
How did Trump decide immigration was the thing from the very first words from the bottom of the escalator on out?
I don’t know.I don’t know. …
In the case of what he does—we can watch it: “Build the wall, build the wall”—
It’s simple: Build the wall.Three words, single-syllable words: Build the wall.How much more simple can you get?And it’s so easy.It’s three syllables: Build the wall.There’s no chant in modern American politics as easy as that, other than “Lock her up,” I guess.So maybe Trump people, maybe you can say that it’s—that that’s the perfect cadence—single-syllable words, three of them put together.
But the reason why the Trump one was so powerful is because it’s visual.It’s not “Build the barrier”; it’s not “Make America safe again.”You can actually imagine a wall.You can imagine that sense of safety and security.You see it when you chant it.And for so many people, it was simple, it was a solution, and it would work.And in my polling, it still only polls 40%, and it has always polled 40%.It’s got 80% support in a Republican primary, but almost no Democrats and only a few more Independents agree with that.So the core of Trump’s immigration policy, the wall, is actually the least supported part of that policy.But it’s the most public because it’s the easiest to communicate, and it’s the one that he talks about and the audience cheers.
… As the administration’s about to start, everybody’s saying: “Well, he’s going to pivot.He’s not going to be as chaotic as he was on the campaign.”What did you think when the travel ban was—that executive order was thrown out right away?And what was it designed to do, from what you could tell?
There is a genuine fear in this country, some of it legitimate, some of it not, that we are so open and so free that we are vulnerable to terrorist attack.And when the newly elected president made it clear that he was going to be on the side of security, that maybe he would go too far but better than not going far enough, his base, the people who voted for him, cheered him wildly.And they were opposed by those who voted against him who are as equally passionate and angry that these decisions that he began to make were, in their words, anti-American.
And so you had the security side and the freedom side at war with each other, loudly and passionately.And you brought in the judiciary, you brought in Congress, and it was just this perfect stew of contentious, conflicting ideas, ideology.And it wasn’t a particularly good way to start off a presidency.But it also made it clear to the public that this guy and this administration was going to be completely different; that they weren’t going to buckle under the pressure of The New York Times or The Washington Post or CNN, and that if tough decisions needed to be made, they would be, and he would not back down.
And some of this is not about the decisions.Some of this, even now as we look back two and a half years later, some of it is about the president himself and his willingness to wade right into controversy; to say things that people thought but would not vocalize, to do things that people secretly wanted but would never acknowledge it, and to fight his way through all of this.
There’s good parts of that; there’s bad parts of that.In some ways, it was the beginning of the ugliness that we see today, the extreme ugliness.And in other ways, he’s doing what no president has ever done before.He told us he was going to do this.He communicated a new policy, and nobody believed him.
Some people take him literally when they should take him figuratively.Some people take him figuratively when they should take him literally.It’s very confusing for the elite in Washington, D.C. But to his voters and to those who hate him, he’s very clear.And on immigration, he has never wavered.
It goes kind of under the surface right after that first weekend.Miller, Sessions, they’re all under—they all burrow in because that other—that countervailing force of Ivanka [Trump], Jared [Kushner], [economic adviser Gary] Cohn, all of those guys, pull him a little bit, apparently, toward the center and direct him in another direction?
I don’t believe—there are theories that say he’s been pulled in different directions by Bannon and Miller, by Jared and Ivanka.I don’t buy that.
… I think so much of the misconceptions, because they don’t understand what the president’s actual policies are or what he truly believes.And some of it is his communication, and some of it is that people don’t want to hear.The president has been a strong advocate for allowing the best and brightest students from across the globe. If they’re going to pay the money to be educated here, he doesn’t want to send them back.He wants to give them a chance to stay here, but no one talks about that.
Everyone is so focused on the wall because that’s what he talks about.And his willingness, for example, to cut a deal on DACA and on DREAM Act that was actually closer to the Democrats than anyone ever believed.If [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer were smart and not such a partisan politician, and particularly [then-House Minority Leader] Nancy Pelosi, they would have jumped at that deal.He was willing to legalize more people than he was being asked to do.In fact, he was offering them a path to citizenship, but the people who hate him don’t listen anymore, and so they didn’t realize the deal that they had, and it went away.… Two-thirds of Americans support an agreement that builds some sort of barrier that provides technology and human involvement, human action, at the border and provides a path to permanent status, if not citizenship, for the DREAM Act and for DACA, two-thirds.And only 19% oppose it.And they could have had that deal last year.
The Dreamers and DACA
So let’s just break it down for just a minute.So when DACA is raised back in September of ’17, there is that meeting where the television cameras are invited in.He’s negotiating right on camera.
… What’s interesting is that the president indicated—there have been several—there have been several times in this administration when the president has been criticized for not understanding the process of governing.And yet he understood better than anyone what Americans really wanted.And one of them was at that meeting where he says to Schumer and Pelosi: “What’s wrong with the regular order?I support regular order.We should have regular order.”And [then-House Majority Leader] Kevin McCarthy corrects him and says to him, “Mr. President, in this case, no, you don’t, because the consequences of that would be problematic in getting the legislation through.”
The president may not have been communicating the process, but he was most certainly communicating what Americans want, which is that they want Washington to return to a place where, in their minds, regular order exists, where processes to get things done exist.So he was speaking on behalf of the public, even if the details of it came across incorrectly.
… So let’s back up.It’s the beginning of his presidency.He feels he’s been elected to do something about immigration.The first shot out of the gun is the travel ban.Then nothing, quiet, quiet, quiet until the fall.What are they—where is opinion at that moment?… Do you think they’ve assessed something that says people are willing to go along with what’s going to happen to the “Dreamers,” especially in light of what will happen on television, right?
Every year that this has been heated, and you have to really go back to ’13, ’14.So it’s now been over half a decade when the public has said that our immigration system was hopelessly broken and desperately needed to be fixed.And that’s one of the few issues where there’s complete consensus.From the far left to the far right, immigration in America is not working.There are too many illegal immigrants here; the rules for legal immigration are too harsh; that people cannot stay in the shadows, we have to address it; that whatever security we have on the border is failing; that people [are] coming across it or they’re staying here too long.
Regardless of where you sit politically, you have come to a full consensus that unless we make significant changes, fundamental changes, that this broken system is going to harm this country economically, national security, and that the damage will be significant to all of us.
But the misperceptions are still so incredibly poignant that everyone talks about how immigration is going to cost jobs or that American workers will be harmed by it.That’s not what the public cares about.The public is much more afraid that we can’t afford it, that it will overcrowd our schools; it will overcrowd our hospitals; that it’s the cost to the taxpayer that Americans are concerned about, not the cost to jobs and the economy.
Similarly, the difference between citizenship and permanent legal status, which used to be about this wide, every year narrows as more people come to believe that it is OK for them to earn—earn the rights to get on the path to citizenship and that there are less people today than ever before who want to send illegal immigrants back.
It is hot as hell on the right.You still have 15% of hard-core Republicans who desperately want to remove them.But for the majority of Republicans, and for virtually every Independent and every Democrat, they’re here; they’ve been here.Most of them have jobs; most of them contribute to the economy.Let’s make them pay a fine; let’s make sure they’re educated; let’s make sure they know English, register with the government.Earn your status.We won’t give it to you, and we won’t give it to you before people who have been in line to get it.But yes, you can become an American if you do it the right way.That’s the consensus now, but you wouldn’t know that from the way people talk to each other about the issue.
The 2018 Midterm Elections
So what did the midterm elections tell us?I know that the strategy for the White House, the Miller strategy for the White House, was caravans, [murdered student] Mollie Tibbetts, get the Army on the border, and it was almost like it was a tableau being created so that voters in whatever districts and however they thought, whoever they thought was supporting immigration, would stand up for the president and the Republicans over the midterms.
But you’re also missing—don’t do that, because you’re missing the Democratic strategy as well.
OK.Tell me.
The Democrats don’t want to resolve this because they think they can generate very high levels of Latino turnout, not realizing that many Latinos don’t like what has happened, and they resent illegal immigration because they think it makes people look worse on them.
Right.
The Republicans have used this to generate turnout among Trump’s really hard-core base because they say, look, we haven’t solved this.This is the threat if you elect a Democratic Congress.They’re going to remove border security.You’ve got Democratic presidential candidates who actually come out against a wall, come out against that kind of border barrier.
So both sides are using it, and both sides are incorrect, because the vast majority of Americans want some sort of barrier.They want some sort of technology.They want the value of human intelligence and personnel at the border.They want DACA addressed and so those kids who came here are allowed to stay here and work towards citizenship.They want the DREAM Act, the vast majority, including a majority of Republicans.
They want this passed.They want E-Verify so that businesses have to play a role in ensuring that they’re only hiring legal workers.They want a temporary visa program.They want a permanent visa program.They want both, the high-educated and the low-educated—the high-educated for the computers and for the software and to create the next Google, and they want people who will work in agriculture and people who are going to do the jobs, quite frankly, that other Americans won’t do.They want all of this.
There is a two-thirds majority for a grand deal.And I think I’m the only person in Washington who’s saying go big, not small.If you go small, then you don’t deliver those things that each side wants.But if you go big—let’s pray they do—you’re going to actually do something that has not been done in a long time, which is to have Republicans and Democrats on the same side for a grand bargain that makes a meaningful, measurable difference in the quality of life of this country.
The last time we did this was George W. Bush and [Sen.] Ted Kennedy on education back in 2001/2002.It’s been almost 20 years.But on immigration, the public says do it, and the only people who aren’t listening to them are the people here in Washington. …
The Government Shutdown
After the election, after the results are in, nevertheless, the White House shutdown, wall, arguing with Pelosi, no, never.What’s happening?
The people in Washington aren’t listening.The people in Washington don’t get it, because they’re only hearing from their base voters.Nancy Pelosi only hears from the San Francisco left.Donald Trump only goes out to his rallies so he hears from his voters, and both of them are not hearing from everybody else, because there are a hell of a lot more people between the coasts who look at what’s happening in Washington and say, “Listen to me and get this done, because you’re frightening me with what’s going on right now.”
People are scared about immigration.They’re scared not to solve it.They’re scared of the consequences if we don’t do anything about it.They’re scared on the left; they’re scared on the right.As I said, the left is all heart and no rule, and the right is all rule and no heart.And the average American is both heart and rule.We are a nation of immigrants; we are a nation of laws: Do both.
And if your story doesn’t have both, then you’re not telling the accurate story of the American people.They think that the extremists on the right and the extremists on the left are wrong.They think, with all due respect because I know him, that Stephen Miller is wrong.They think, with all due respect because I know her, that Nancy Pelosi is wrong.That you take the pieces of what both of them agree with and you can do it at the same time, and whoever does that will capture the vast majority of the American people, will capture the centers.They’ll be beaten up by talk radio, and they’ll be beaten up on the web, but two-thirds of the country will be pretty damn happy with it.
Any doubt in your mind that immigration, the Stephen Miller version of immigration, is going to be the president’s position?
Stop doing this.Stop doing this.It is—you can’t—there’s nothing Trump can do if [Sen.] Dick Durbin is going to kill it.And Durbin is a very important part of this, or was an important part, when he was the whip and doing all the things that he did.[Rep. Luis] Gutierrez was going to vote for this.… You had leading Democrats willing to vote for a compromise.You had leading Republicans willing to vote for a compromise.For one brief, shining moment, they could have done this, and they still can.But they have to want to.
Even with this president?
And the problem is—even with this president, even with this speaker of the House, because you can’t get anything through without the speaker of the House doing it, and she doesn’t want it.She doesn’t want to do this because she thinks she’s going to get elected off of it, because she wants to turn out her Hispanic vote in Texas; she wants to continue the Latino vote in California.So she will egg the president on, play to his worst sensibilities, but it doesn’t matter.No matter what he does, it doesn’t matter if the speaker wants to kill it.
So you have to be fair.They both have to want it.And I’m telling you, the public wants them both to sit down and shut up and get it done.They want some sort of barrier.The president is right.
OK, so how does this happen?
By both of them finally deciding that they want to put the country ahead of their politics.And they’ll win in the end.Trump will win in the end.If he does this, he will get more votes than if he doesn’t.And she will win in the end because if she does this, it will help her keep her position in the House.They both can benefit.But they’re both—it’s like mutually assured destruction.That is what we have in Washington right now, and that is why the immigration system doesn’t work, because there are bits and pieces of all sides that all people want.
There is a consensus.I’ve done the polling.I’ve done the focus groups.I’ve presented both to Republicans and Democrats.There is a consensus.They can do this.You cannot put the blame just on the president.You cannot put the blame just on the speaker of the House.They both have to want to do this together.
You have to be fair.
… So the shutdown—can you take us into—you were dealing with him at that point.You were helping him with language—
I wasn’t.Actually, that story’s wrong.But I’ll talk to you about shutdown because we looked at it.
Yeah.
The government had been shut down earlier in the administration, and Chuck Schumer took full blame for it.And, in fact, they started calling it the “Schumer shutdown.”It’s got that nice ring to it.The senator needs to be a little more careful next time.But when both Schumer and Pelosi came to the White House, the president—I don’t even know if he would realize it now—that he essentially took responsibility for it, and the public blamed him for it because he said, “Bring it on.”And while that may not have had a long-term consequence, the public fundamentally believe that Washington should work.They fundamentally believe that there is no reason to shut the government down.And whoever is seen as pulling that trigger is the one who’s going to get blamed.
The problem with that event is that the Democrats absolutely scored the short-term gain.
…The Democrats won the shutdown, and they won the shutdown because Trump took responsibility for it.It’s probably the worst communication of the last two and a half years, because the public, just as the public thinks that the government should work, they think immigration should work, and if you’re seen as either standing in the way of immigration reform or standing in the way of the government doing its job, they will oppose you.
There are 15, 20, maybe 25% of Americans on one side who loved it.But the vast, vast majority thought this is ridiculous.These are children in a sandbox, and we deserve better.And the same attitude towards that shutdown, which could have easily been pinned on the Democrats, instead became Trump’s responsibility because he made it his responsibility.He said it.All you have to do is go back and look at the tape.
It was the same thing as that first presidential debate that he swore that he won, even though the American people thought he lost.
Immigration is solvable in the eyes of the public, and so their attitude is, “Solve it.”And they haven’t.
Yeah. As a pivotal point, the shutdown, what was the blowback?What was the large effect for the way people viewed the situation and the process itself?
I don’t think that the shutdown had any lasting impact, either on attitudes towards Congress, towards the president, towards the White House, the administration, towards Republicans or Democrats with one exception.It just proved the point that Washington was broken and it still is broken, and so it instilled a sense of cynicism with the public and ugliness here in Washington between the two political parties and the new leadership of the House and the White House.
There’s some pretty bad blood here and some pretty deep resentments that did not exist even as recently as four years ago.And the shutdown was the confirmation that things are still broken.
Political Divide and the 2020 Election
The last for me: So the upcoming election is 2020.Immigration seems to be, again, going to be back on the front burner.What do you see?Progress does not seem possible.How do you see it?Is it only partisan politics at this point?What’s going on?
The Democrats will use immigration in 2020 to drive up the Hispanic and Latino vote.The Republicans will use immigration to drive up the core Trump vote.And no one seems to be trying to actually solve the problem.And that’s the tragedy, that everyone can win.And I know that in life, in politics, you’re never supposed to say that.But on this one issue, everyone could win, because there is a consensus, privately, on Capitol Hill.There is a consensus, privately, in the White House.There is a consensus in America.The question is, does anyone, does anyone, have the courage to demand that consensus be heard?
Can I ask one final question?
Go ahead.
Because we started with the idea that there was going to be a compromise that both sides saw a middle ground, and you said the American public believes that there’s a compromise.But looking at where we are now, where there’s a well-acknowledged crisis on the border, when you look at—
Democrats don’t necessarily acknowledge that, by the way.
When you look at the politics, the polarization of Washington, the two sides, do you think that the government, the American government, the Congress, the president, have the ability to solve the problem given the realities of the politics?
I’m waiting for someone who has the courage of their convictions to stand up and say enough is enough.And that person will be rewarded with accolades across the political spectrum.I’m waiting for someone who says on an issue like immigration, which is at the core of who we are as Americans and where we are going as a country, I’m waiting for someone to say: “I will not be intimidated by the left or the right.I will not do what the editorial page of The New York Times wants me to do, and I will not do what Breitbart tells me to do.I will say enough of that, and I will solve it, and I will solve it not just for 2020, but I will solve it for the future.And I will pick those pieces that make sense.I will pick those pieces that 60 or 70% of Americans support.”And I will tell that individual that they will not just be doing right by America; that that person will be elected or reelected because a governing consensus exists.
Behind closed doors in America, it exists.In the homes of Americans, it exists.And the only place where it doesn’t is right here in Washington.
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