Cliff Sims served as a communications aide in the Trump White House and later wrote the book “Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House.”
Sims’ candid, full interview was conducted with FRONTLINE during the making of the two-part January 2020 documentary series “America’s Great Divide: From Obama to Trump.â€
Watch Part One here: https://youtu.be/SnMBYMOTwEs
And Part Two here: https://youtu.be/l5vyDPN19ww
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This interview is being published as part of FRONTLINE’s Transparency Project, an effort to open up the source material behind our documentaries. Explore the transcript and interactive version of this interview, and others, on the FRONTLINE website:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/interview-collection/americas-great-divide-from-obama-to-trump/
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This interview was conducted with FRONTLINE during the making of our two-part documentary series “America's Great Divide.â€
Watch Part One here: https://youtu.be/SnMBYMOTwEs and Part Two here: https://youtu.be/l5vyDPN19ww
This guy is full of it. He's still afraid to criticize Trump no matter what, like how he "understands" why Trump was mad when Sessions recused. Instead of admitting that Trump was nervous about an investigation because he knew he was dirty, he left it at he Trump felt abandoned. Cliff Sims has an immature political outlook that causes him to put party over what's right.
One of the best of all the interviews. You can tell he is a decent, well meaning man who is trying to speak the truth as best he can from his own perspective and he is trying to be fair in how he describes what he saw and he is trying to be reasonably fair to Trump, the human being. I really appreciate that because it helps me trust what he says in that he seems to still have a clear head about it all and can help explain perspective from the people involved in the administration at the time. I thought the Bannon interviews were THE best of the bunch but this one is really great as well.
This whole presidency was like a mob family, with the Supreme Court acting like gangsters in black robe. I can’t wait for all this trash to be over 😒
FDT
FOff
This is one of the best interviews in this series. That guy really illuminates some of the stuff I've been wondering about for years. The inauguration/alternative facts and the Rosenstein letter really start to make sense for me. Thank you so much
He does not care in fact he thinks a good thing that the superstitious suspecious religious supreme court now we have is in fact a gooid thing for Trump for his side, fact is he would like a couple of more warlocks and witches to rule on the Supreme court.
This guy is full of it. Bolton gives a better view of Trumps chaotic management style
Most of these full interviews are really great.
Hard to not notice how the PBS interviewer always changed the topic of conversation when Sims brings up some situation that portrays Trump in a positive light..like "oh positive comment about Trump this is a dead end so lets try this other subject to see if we can get Trump in a negative light" – and this whole interview series does the exact same thing…and alot more too….we all know that the US political Establishment hated Trump and this interview series feels like Establishment funded anti Trump propaganda thinly masked as a legitimate interview…this type of show would not have flown as a legit piece 25 or 30 years ago when the main mantra of the media was to strive for complete political neutrality & balanced journalism….
A great point made about 'energizing' that slice of the population who can push the election in your favor….
All the people that vehemently proclaim "there was no collusion" never seem to address the simple fact, that doesn't matter The POINT is Russia, as he says is not friendly, DID INTERFERE and basically FOR Trump. Whether he colluded or not is totally beside the point. In and of itself that is a HUGE warning sign! BIGLY! 🙁
We don't need any more chaos and division.
Good for the evangelicals, but not for the majority of the United States
We paid the tariffs. Nothing good about that.
Giving that guy the benefit of a doubt is what got us into that mess.
This dude is full of shit.he is still star struck…the pretzeling he does to Ignore the actual facts of these issues is nuts..
One-hour-and-tweny-eight minute job interview!!
More than a few times he was twisting in the wind, constructing BS excuses for his all-mighty orange one.
Oblivious isn't he. 😮
I can’t stand listening to this guy… who is he to tell me or ANY citizen what religion I follow?
And no, DT IS NOT A DEFENDER OF ANYTHING BUT HIMSELF.
Serious question for Mr. Sims (the gentlemen being interviewed) – If Trump is not a racist nor traffics in racial loaded/coded language, what did he mean when he told Paul Ryan while watching the Tiki torch protesters shouting about who would not replace them “those are my peopleâ€?
I find most Frontline interviews to be thoughtful and insightful. This one…. Not so much.
The former staffer guy from the Trump administration thinks that it is plausible or credible for people to give the former president the benefit of the doubt as it relates to race or racism. Come on… Really???
His words “I don’t know why Trump was unable to lead on the issue of racial reconciliation?†Like maybe it’s because he like his buddy Stevie B has certain entrenched views that would be at odds with such a position?
If they (FBI/DOJ) don't find anything that really touches the President (Trump). What an extraordinary amount of damage has been done to our democracy. By spending two years under this giant cloud over the whole country. – Cliff Sims
This POS wouldn't know what Christianity means if it hit him in the taint
My god, I can't believe this guy. What a quisling. Unfortunate he has so little respect for the rule of law. I do hope his career suffers for his connection to the man who spent four years breaking the law. Cliff Sims helped undermine this democracy.
This is TRULY a mentally ill man…. I watched the entire interview, and all I’m hearing is name dropping, babbling, praise for trump, equivocation, justification…. This man is a SICK moron, and he has no idea what he’s taking about
another sycophant
I wonder if this perso had to speak to the 1/6 commission?
Jeff Session was doing his job. Trump is a whining 😢 baby
We now know Trump cheated.
Flynn attempts to over through the government. Fascist
Steve is in jail. Racis