I was maybe the earliest person who was constructive toward Trump who served at a high level in the Bush administration. I took a lot of guff from my former Bush colleagues who didn't see what was happening in the country. I'm not smarter than they are or a better person than they are. I just traveled a lot around the country.

I do think Donald Trump has conservative instincts. I think he had anti-Obama instincts. I think he saw Obamacare, the Obama foreign policy, the Obama economic policies as harmful to America.

I was maybe the earliest person who was constructive toward Trump who served at a high level in the Bush administration. I took a lot of guff from my former Bush colleagues who didn't see what was happening in the country. I'm not smarter than they are or a better person than they are. I just traveled a lot around the country.

I think people who are concerned about the alt right are properly focusing on making sure it doesn't get mainstreamed, because it shouldn't be.

Some conservatives are traditionalists, and the idea of breaking things up and changing things is concerning to them at times.

I think where conservatives were wary of Trump is he had not advocated for conservative positions for decades. He had been more meandering in his politics, including being a Democrat, including writing checks to Democrats. I have said that it's impossible to say what a candidate is until they get to office, especially someone who has never been in office before.

P.J. O'Rourke says that conservatives really hate government and every couple of years we put them in charge and then we're reminded how much we really hate government. We're not always necessarily great at the task of running government. We're the anti-government party. It actually makes some sense we're not so good at that. But you got to have basic competence in how you run the government, even in how you reduce its effectiveness in people's lives.