Pod Save America - "Why Republicans Can't Get Over The Trump."

Episode Date: July 19, 2022

Joe Manchin fucks over the planet while Democrats try to make progress without him. Then former Republican strategist Tim Miller joins the pod to talk about his new book that explains why so many of his friends and colleagues went full-MAGA. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, Joe Manchin fucks over the planet while Democrats try to make progress without him. And former Republican strategist Tim Miller is here to discuss his new book about why so many of his friends and colleagues went full MAGA. You're not even going to address who's not here today? The person who's not here, I honestly forgot for a second. Jon Lovett's not feeling well. Jon Lovett's not here. Jon Lovett is feeling ill. So he is not here today. He's a cold. He Lovett's not feeling well. John Lovett is feeling ill. So he is not here today.

He's a cold. He's fine. But pray for him. Exactly. Also, come see us on tour. We are hitting the road later this week and next month. Later this week, we're going to be in Seattle and Portland. In August, we'll be in Nashville and Atlanta.

Tickets are selling fast. So go grab some at crooked.com slash events and come say hi we'd love to see in person all right let's get to the news a global heat wave has led to record-breaking temperatures across north america asia and especially europe where the intense heat has caused death drought and wildfires but here in the united states president biden's plan to fight climate change was defeated on thursday by jochin, the West Virginia millionaire who became rich from his family's coal business and has taken more campaign donations from the oil and gas industry than any other senator. How about that? After yet another round of negotiations where Senate Democrats were basically willing to give Manchin whatever he wanted on climate,

willing to give Manchin whatever he wanted on climate. The wealthy coal baron said he couldn't support any tax or energy provisions until at least September because he wants to see if inflation improves by then. That's the latest excuse. Manchin has reportedly told Chuck Schumer that he would support a reconciliation bill that allows Medicare to negotiate for cheaper prescription drugs and extends more generous Affordable Care Act subsidies for two more years. So Democrats will try to get that bill on Joe Biden's desk before the August recess. Tommy, what do you think happened here? Why did these negotiations fall apart between, this time between Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer for like the hundredth time in two years?

Maybe we divide this into what Manchin and Schumer say happened, and then later we get to what we think happened. Great. Because for me, they're not the same. Yeah, no, me neither. So that's great. Good place to start. Yeah, so Manchin claimed that the latest inflation numbers, the 9.1% increase in consumer price

index in June has upset him, and he has decided that he can't support a package that includes climate change spending or tax increases. This gets even more confusing as you try to follow it, because days earlier, Manchin had supported a plan to raise taxes on the rich by closing certain kinds of tax loopholes to ensure that Medicare is solvent. But as always, finding consistency here is probably not a good use of our time. The Washington Post also reported that Manchin told a group of business leaders that he would support raising money to go towards deficit reduction. So he's very focused on deficit reduction these days.

The thing that's so infuriating about this, John, is that all the smart economists, not us, smart economists say that Build Back Better and these climate provisions would not lead to inflation because we're talking about climate spending over a decade and they're all offset by tax increases, right? So none of this, none of what he's saying, none of this logically makes sense. It's okay to be concerned about inflation. It's sure you're concerned about the deficit, but he's taking actions that don't make sense given those concerns. And that is what makes this conversation so infuriating. I mean, Manchin and Josh Gottheimer in the House and a few other centrist Democrats have been making noise about this for a week now about these tax increases on the wealthiest individuals, on the biggest the biggest corporations because what like this is just getting rid of the trump

tax cuts because they're worried about inflation they're worried about like a big corporation or a rich person like a tax increase that's going to hit them raising taxes won't lead to inflation you'll spend less because you got taxed more like and we're worried about those people having a tough time with price increases that that's who we're worried about right it's fucking ridiculous so that's what they that's what mansion says happened yeah and he's basically saying too like i didn't walk away from it because i'll we could still do this deal maybe in september if the inflation numbers are better by september he wanted to once again kick it down the road a few more months but i think at this time chuck schumer and joe biden were like no more we're not going to wait around to september and then have

you pull the fucking football away again in september and then that's it yeah what i think is that joe manchin understands that uh successful propaganda doesn't mean convincing you that black is white or up is down it means confusing you to the point where you lose your mind and that is what's happened here over the course of many years. Trying to parse this man's words or follow his various positions is impossible because they are truly incoherent. And I think that incoherence was a strategy in service of slowly strangling this bill for whatever reason, because he's from a fossil fuel state, a coal state, and he never wanted it to pass because he doesn't want the fossil fuel economy replaced by climate change. Maybe it's because he's from a fossil fuel state, a coal state, and he never wanted it to pass because he doesn't want the fossil fuel economy replaced by climate change. Maybe it's because he's hearing

from lobbyists or big donors, or maybe it's his own financial interests. I don't think he ever wanted this climate change language to pass. I think he has strung us all along and now here we are. In fact, there are people at the White House who have said that Manchin tells Joe Biden and every Democratic senator exactly what they want to hear. And then he changes his mind when he talks to the staff and he changes his mind whenever he talks to some lobbyists and he meets with the lobbyists. He's very impressionable, Joe Manchin. And he has been looking, and I've also heard that he has been looking this whole time for an excuse to not do this deal that absolves him of responsibility, right? So he can blame it on inflation. He can

blame it on progressives for asking too much. He can blame it on the White House for releasing a statement that includes his name, right? That hurts his feelings, right? He wants to be able to say no to the deal, but he doesn't want to be at fault for it. So he wants to look for somewhere else to blame or someone else to blame. He got everything he fucking asked for in these latest negotiations and climate. Schumer basically said, first first of all he got rid of the clean energy standard in the last round of negotiations in this round he got oil and gas production included he got the electric vehicle credits out he changed the direct payments for energy companies to tax incentives for clean energy companies like he got everything and then what happened is because schumer kept saying yes to everything he's like

oh fuck i just got everything i wanted now i'm'm going to have to say yes. So he needed a new excuse. Yep. It's bullshit. It's absolutely bullshit. Like, do you think there was anything Biden or Schumer or any other Democrat could have or should have done differently to get a better outcome here? The honest answer is I don't know. I mean, I don't know if Joe Biden could have had some heart to heart or negotiation earlier or done something to bring Manchin around. earlier or done something to bring Manchin around. I do think that Schumer did not play the expectations game well for all of us because he knew where Manchin's red lines were for a long

time while progressives were pushing for more and more to be in the early versions of Build Back Better. Now, of course, Joe Manchin abandoned this secret letter he had written to Chuck Schumer and all the red lines he didn't have in there. But here's where I ultimately land. I think Joe Manchin did what he felt was in his political interests. And you know what? It worked. Joe Manchin's approval rating in the first quarter of 2021 in West Virginia was 40%. In early 2022, Morning Consult found him at 57% approval in West Virginia. The increase came from Republicans and independents, and he protected fossil fuels in the state. So Joe Manchin did what was helpful for his narrow political interests.

So the joke's on us. We're debating, is he stupid? Is he craven? He's a hack politician who I think wants to get elected again, wants to run again. And I am skeptical that any amount of browbeating from the White House or Schumer or progressives could have changed his mind because he knows that in West Virginia being seen as beating up on Democrats is good politics for him. And he cares more about his future than the planet's. Yeah, you're exactly right. You start with the question, how do you get reelected in a Trump plus 50 state? Not easy. Right.

In 2024. And the answer is everything that we've seen from Joe Manchin over the last two years. That's the answer that he gave. Pick fights with liberals. You're exactly right. Picking fights with liberals. It's like you could have, you could send a thousand progressives to West Virginia to pick it outside of his office. That's only going to help them more with voters in West Virginia. There aren't enough progressives in West Virginia. There aren't enough Democrats in West Virginia. And that's what we got. So now the question is, tell you one silver lining. I was looking back. I was listening to Dave Roberts podcast. He's talking with some climate activists. It is worth noting that the Democratic Party as a whole has

improved enormously on climate. In 2009, the cap and trade bill that passed the house got something like 40 no votes from Democrats. This time, basically every elected Democrat in Congress was for the climate change provisions in Build Back Better except Manchin that went much, much, much further than in 2009. So I do think that climate activists are doing the right thing. They're winning. Sunrise, like all these groups out there have been kicking ass and focusing on this and centering climate in democratic campaigns are doing the right thing it's just like we had a razor thin margin and the one guy we needed represented a coal state and it sucks just like we don't have a pro-choice majority in the senate because of mansion and and in the filibuster thing a pro-choice

anti-filibuster majority we don't have a pro-climate majority either because joe mansion is not on the fucking team yeah and the only way to deal with that is to make sure we elect john federman and a democrat in wisconsin and re-elect the democratic senate re-elect democratic house and then you have a pro-climate majority in this in in the in congress that's that's the only way to make sure that joe mansion's voice doesn't count as much as it's counting right now meanwhile it's like 113 degrees in texas and like texas doesn't have a power as it's counting right now. Meanwhile, it's like 113 degrees in Texas. And like Texas doesn't have a power grid that functions. But yeah, things are going great. So now the question then is,

what else can the Biden administration do about climate change on its own? And what about states with Democratic governors and legislatures? So, I mean, the federal government buys a lot of stuff. And one thing that activists would like to see the White House do is use that purchasing power to incentivize industries that we need. So you buy a lot of vehicles, you buy electric cars, you buy other zero emission vehicles, which incentivizes growth in the entire industry. I think that's something they will do. Biden could ban drilling on new federal lands and in federal waters. They could phase out the U.S. government's financing of fossil fuel projects.

And then you could also lean on international organizations like the IMF or the World Bank to try to do the same. They could just do more conservation of land. Generally, a lot of climate groups want Biden to declare a national climate emergency, which would unlock some authorities. You could direct the EPA to establish limits on the emissions of greenhouse gases. Some people want him to use the Defense Production Act to increase manufacturing of clean energy vehicles. Now, the challenge with all of these ideas is that the courts are now filled to the brim with 24-year-old Trump lackey judges, right? And we have a Supreme Court that just last week ruled to make it harder for the EPA to regulate carbon emissions without authorization for Congress. So there's the chance a lot of this stuff will get challenged immediately in court and could get struck down. But I don't know,

the argument for and against trying, I would have to ask some sort of legal expert or climate expert. Yeah. And, you know, and Dan talked to Amy Westervelt of Crooked Media's Hot Take Pod about this when the EPA decision came down from the Supreme Court. And she actually said it was not as horrible as she thought it was going to be worse. And they still retain, the EPA still retain some authority to limit greenhouse gas emissions. I don't know if you saw the tweet thread from Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic Senator from Rhode Island, who's a big climate hawk. How dare you ask if I saw Sheldon Whitehouse's tweet thread? Of course I did. How could I miss the Sheldon Whitehouse Twitter thread? Well, particularly because he, in the Twitter thread,

he advocated for an executive branch, quote, climate beast mode. I'm sorry, what? So he just did a whole tweet thread of all the executive actions that Biden can take. And he wants, he's called it climate beast mode.

And then it's a lot of that. It's basically everything you just said, Tommy, plus a rule that would force energy producers to account for greenhouse gas emissions as a cost of doing business. So it puts a Tommy, plus a rule that would force energy producers to account for greenhouse gas emissions as a cost of doing business. So it puts a carbon price and a rule that requires major polluters to use technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions and impose stronger pollution controls on cars, light trucks and heavy duty vehicles.

Obama did cars and light trucks back in the Obama administration. You can go further than that now. You can make even more energy efficient and then for the first time do a rule on heavy duty vehicles as well. You need to just Marshawn Lynch that shit. Why not? It's just climate beast mode i like it sheldon whitehouse um so that's climate um i guess what we're left with is this reconciliation bill which went from build back better to in states what states can oh i'm sorry states yeah you know a lot of states are taking aggressive climate action we live in california luckily we've done a lot of great work. There's a statewide cap and trade program. California has mandated carbon-free electricity by 2045. There's incentive for purchasing electric vehicles. So the states are doing great work.

Basically, there's some like 22 dozen some odd states have signed this climate compact to try to basically stay in the Paris Climate Accord. So things are happening on a state level. I think the concern is what if we lose those governorships? What if the court strikes down, you know, creates a ruling that is even more radical and direct and inhibits their capacity to take action on climate? What if Congress does something, if Republicans gain control of everything in 2024. Like the longer term concern. That's right. That's right. All right. So that's on climate. What we're left with is after starting with this Build Back Better bill,

we're left with health care and prescription drug provisions. How big of a deal are these provisions in this smaller reconciliation bill? So I've not seen all the details on the drug bill. It seems like it would let Medicare negotiate directly with drug makers over the price of some of the most expensive prescription drugs. It would penalize drug companies that increase prices faster than inflation and cap annual premium growth. That's a big deal. That's very important for seniors who are struggling to afford drugs. And then the ACA provisions would extend healthcare subsidies to people who got them as part of the American Rescue Plan for two more years. And I think insurers,

something like 13 million people don't see a big premium increase. So if you're one of those 13 million people, this is enormously important for you. If you're someone who's struggling to pay for your prescription drugs, obviously this is very important to you. So I'm not opposed to getting this done or suggesting it's not important. It's just often, you know, this is what we Democrats do a lot. We end up comparing what we're able to do with what we wish we could have done. And it makes accomplishments look smaller, which is understandable, but you know, yeah. Well, I mean, I will say that demoralizing, allowing Medicare to negotiate for cheaper prescription drugs is one of those democratic policies that politicians

have been talking about for as long as you and i have been politics we joke about the like uh every single democratic presidential candidate talks about like stopping tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas and giving them to companies who create jobs here like campaign mad libs medicare negotiation is like is like that one it's one of the most popular polling policies all the time it's one of the things the democrats have been talking about forever and haven't done. And just common sense. And it's common sense. And it's going to also cap annual out-of-pocket costs at $2,000 for all Medicare beneficiaries. So that's our annual thing. So that's, it is a pretty big deal, but it is of course just a small piece of what we originally hoped for. And just infuriating as you, as you read about, you know, Portugal and

Spain burning to the ground and we're doing nothing on climate. Like I totally get everyone's frustration, although this would be very important for a lot of seniors and a lot of people are struggling to pay for their Medicare bills. So after this reconciliation bill, Democrats don't really have the votes to get the rest of Biden's agenda passed between now and the midterms. Biden said he'll take executive action on climate. So we'll see if he takes some of the action that we've just been talking about. He should also take executive action on student debt relief, which we've been waiting for for a while.

There's no excuse for that anymore. And basically, he should take executive action on anything else the administration thinks they can get away with at this point. Yeah. Because you have a couple months. Let rip, Joe. The House is also reportedly moving forward on legislation

that would guarantee other rights that Republicans in the Supreme Court might be coming after, like contraception and gay marriage. Pelosi and Schumer have talked about setting up votes for these. What do you think about that? I like the idea. I mean, we talk about this later with Tim Miller about the need for Democrats to force Republicans to vote on things that are incredibly unpopular like this, and that I think speak to the extremism of the Republican party, because it's clearly what we're seeing is that in the wake of Dobbs, Republicans aren't satisfied with their efforts to strip away abortion rights from women. They want to go a lot further. You know, Ted Cruz wants to ban gay marriage. There's people are talking about passing the

most draconian anti-abortion laws you can think of. They're going after all kinds of rights. So yes, I'm in favor of putting forward as many tough votes for Republicans as we can. Will it matter? I'm not sure, but it's worth trying. And you know what? If fucking Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema decide that the filibuster is more important than gay marriage, than the right to contraception, then they can explain it to their constituents. And I think it's probably time at this point for Biden and the rest of the Democratic caucus, which they're moving towards to get a little tougher with them if they fucking block those votes. Well, the thing that's been very frustrating about all of the conversation around the climate change provisions and the reconciliation bill is it's really written as an intra-Democratic party disaster or a mansion

only failure when there are 49 republicans who oppose doing anything to stop the planet from becoming uninhabitable yeah because many of them don't believe in climate change in the first place and and all of them don't want to do anything right but they all just sort of get a pass like the the more cynical you are the more you get a pass on not doing anything and that's challenging you know no politics let's talk about how democratic candidates handle their campaigns between now and November at this point. You know, on one hand, they've got a president with record low approval ratings to Democratic senators who fucked up their legislative agenda. On the other, they get a Supreme Court and a Republican Party that's arguably more extreme than it was under Donald Trump,

which is which is maybe one reason that the polls are showing that some of these Senate candidates, Democratic Senate candidates are in better shape than Joe Biden. And it's the polls are also showing that the midterm generic ballot is a little bit better for Democrats than of course, Joe Biden's approval ratings. Dan and I talked a little bit about this on Thursday, but how do you think Democrats should run in an environment like this? What should they be saying on the campaign trail? Yeah. I mean, look, with the caveat that I'm skeptical of all polling forever and always, thanks to the last couple couple elections. I do think it's worth, it's hard for me to answer this question sort of writ large, like how should all Democrats run, but I do think it's worth looking at a couple of campaigns that are going

very well. Let's start with Fetterman's campaign in Pennsylvania, John Fetterman running for Senate. He hasn't been able to be on the campaign trail since May because of medical issues. But in that period, I feel like I have retained more messaging from his campaign than almost any other campaign out there. And obviously that's in part because Dr. Oz is a fun, flawed, like ripe target, right? He's just a weirdo, snake oil salesman celebrity who doesn't even live in the state. But the Fetterman campaign has been unbelievably creative and focused with their ads. And I really think it's working, right? They got Snooki from Jersey Shore to record a message on Cameo about how Dr. Oz moved from

Jersey to Pennsylvania to find a new job. That went super viral, was incredibly memorable, was talked about on The View, right? That is like the gold standard of viral online ads. The Fetterman campaign figured out that Dr. Oz recorded a TV ad in his New Jersey mansion. They hammered him for that. When Dr. Oz went to this like tourist trap cheesesteak place in Philly, Fetterman quote tweeted him and saying, ah, yes, the trip to Pat's plus Gino's a rite of passage for every tourist. They flew a banner over the beaches saying, welcome home to New Jersey, right? Like the tone is light. It's funny. It's memorable. And it's relentlessly on message saying this guy is not from here. And it's just so impressive.

They're filling this gap of not having a candidate on the trail. They're raising a ton of money. They're on the air. I mean, it's just like they are doing it how it should be done right now. I think what's so effective about that is it is this guy's not from here, but also he's out of touch and he doesn't give a shit about you. And I do think that that is a message for Democrats about Republicans that we have not heard enough or at least for a while. And it's like these people, they don't care about inflation. They don't care about gas prices. They don't care about your rent. They don't care about your cost of living.'t care about your rent. They don't care about your cost of living. They care about deciding who you love, who you're allowed to marry, when you start a family, how many kids you have, what they learn in school, what books they read, what politics they have.

Like, this is the shit that Republicans care about. They care about having control over your life. They care about controlling. They don't give a shit about your cost of living. They don't give a shit about the problems that you have. They care about imposing their narrow, extreme political view on the entire country. Doesn't matter if most people don't agree with it. They do not give a shit about you. And so I think Fetterman has made great strides in defining Dr. Oz as an out of touch, out of state celebrity weirdo. The other sort of theme you're seeing out there is my opponent is

very extreme. And I think the Warnock campaign is doing a great job of defining Herschel Walker in that way. Because again, Herschel Walker, he's helping them out a lot. He's helping out the Warnock campaign a lot. He said some incredibly weird stuff. Most recently, it was Herschel Walker talking about climate change and the issue being that like good air is floating over to China and displacing the bad air. It's like, what is this guy talking about? He's totally incoherent, like a lot of his campaign. And I do think you need to drive that home because it can be disqualifying for voters. And look, a recent poll, again, I don't trust any polls, but a recent poll showed Warnock up by 10 points, which is shocking in Georgia, which is shocking given where Biden's approval is. So I do think like they need to get pressing that advantage. Drilling Walker is unprepared for the job. But that kind of message that my

opponent is too extreme for the job, I think will be effective in Georgia. It'll be effective in Wisconsin for whoever runs against Ron Johnson because he's just looney tunes. It'll be a potential message for the Shapiro campaign against Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, because there's some really wackadoodle, as John McCain would say, extreme people out there running for office in the Republican Party this year. And I think you want to define them that way as early as you can. And we've been talking about this all year, but I don't think you have to choose between my opponent is extreme and my opponent is out of touch. I think it is my opponent is so obsessed with his extreme positions or her extreme positions that they don't give a shit about you.

Like they're trying to criminalize all abortions with no exceptions whatsoever. That's what Republicans care about. They don't give a shit about inflation. They don't care about what you're struggling with. And I think you can combine both of them. And I think Warnock's doing that well. I think Fetterman's doing that well. We're seeing that in a lot of these Democratic Senate races. Yeah, just really great like work by campaign teams, especially the sort of digital teams, the folks creating the online content to fill the void and deliver a negative message against their Republican opponents, while the candidate either in Fetterman's case is sort of off the playing

field for a while recovering or Warnock carries a positive message about what he'll do for the state. Totally agree. All right, when we come back, we will talk to Tim Miller about his brand new book. Joining us in studio today, writer at The Ballwork, MSNBC analyst, former Republican operative, and author of the new book why we did it a travelogue from the republican road to hell our old pal tim miller old pal is right john it's been a long time you're starting to look like roger sterling over there okay pretty soon i did not invite you on for the it's nice to be back with you guys. It's been a while. It is good to see you, Tim. Get me self-conscious here. You wrote this fantastic book. It is about why so many of your

Republican friends and colleagues ended up going full MAGA, which we will get to. But you were pretty tough on yourself. And I would argue more self-reflective and self-critical than most people in professional politics. How did you get to that place? I felt like I had to do it if I was going to write about them in the first part. I had an agent call me when I was interested in writing a book and just sort of trying that out in the 10th year of my midlife crisis. I wanted to try something else new. And I was talking to some agents and one of them was basically like, Tim, why don't you write something about the 10 douchiest manga grifters in America? He's like, we'll sell a million copies of that. I basically like, Tim, why don't you write something about like the 10 douchiest MAGA grifters in America?

He's like, we'll sell a million copies of that. I was like, that would have been enjoyable, right? But I felt like if I was going to write about all these folks, I really need to look back at myself and be honest with the reader about myself for starters. But more than that, if I want to really understand like why they went along with bad shit, I wanted to look at myself. Why did I go along with shit I knew was bad? You can know your own motivations better than you can know other people's motivations, no matter how good you are friends with them. And some of the people I wrote about were friends. And so I wanted to reflect on, look, I'm gay.

How did I work for anti-gay homophobes? What was the brain gymnastics I did in order to rationalize that? And I felt like by exploring that in the book, hopefully, it shined more of a light on the rationalizations that these other folks used to go along with Donald Trump. So the elephant in the room here, or the rhino in the room, as it is. I'm not a rhino anymore. I'm officially out. The lib in the room.

Three libs in the room. So you used to come on cricket shows back in 2017. We ended up parting ways because of some reporting about corporate work you did, including work with this guy, Chuck Johnson, who's a right-wing troll, who you write about in the book. In the book, I mean- He wrote a very mean sub stack about my book, which I think nine people have read, and that makes me feel very sad. So in the book, you write about the fact that, you know, you ultimately came to feel like it

wasn't just your work for Republican candidates that you came to regret, but that you also felt like the corporate work contributed to this broader problem. Can you explain why and sort of how you got to that place? Yeah. And I thought that was another important, you know, element of, of what was in the book, right? I did something good in 2016, which was, I said, fuck this. I'm not going to vote for Donald Trump. I'm going to support Hillary Clinton. And I worked with a PAC called Our Principles PAC. I write about one of my favorite anecdotes in the book is that every other person who was on Our Principles PAC, which was the main principle was to stop Donald Trump, ended up being on a pro Donald Trump PAC after he won the primary, except for me and one other person.

So I did that. And I think I – and then Trump wins. And, you know, we all go into this depressive place. We don't need to revisit all that. And I'm trying to figure out what to do next with my life, right? I'm like, okay, I can't go back into Republican politics anymore. You know, what should I do? And inertia, basically, I wrote about this. Like inertia takes over, right? Like, well, what should I do? And I, and inertia, basically I wrote about

this, like inertia takes over, right? Like, well, what do I know how to do in my career? Well, I know how to be a hit man, like an opposition research magnet. And so I guess I'll just do that for corporate clients instead of for political clients. I can't work for Republicans anymore. And, you know, so I went and did that for about a year or two. And that's, you know, how we got caught up in our kerfuffle based on the work that I was doing then with Facebook. And I just, I looked back on that. It's like, well, any of the individual things that people were like mad at me about about that, like, you know in my life, which was like, man, like the, the, the Republicans are going down to this dark place, but I compartmentalized out the rest of my work life, you know, and, uh, and, and continued going along with, you know, doing this sort of, uh, opposition research work that I think was, is really contaminating to the public discourse.

You know, if your job is to put negative information out about people every day, like that's not adding anything to society if you're doing it on behalf of anyone, frankly, but corporate interests for sure. And so, you know, I thought that in a lot of ways it tied into the theme of this book, right? Which is like a lot of the people who were in different shoes than me kind of went along with Trump for the same reason, like the same sort of inertia, you know? Like these were people who knew Trump was bad. Maybe they probably in private voted for Paul Ryan

or the Pope or whatever, you know, they wrote somebody in. But they're Republican political consultants and they said, well, I can't go along with Donald Trump. I'm not going to go into the White House. What should I do? I guess I'll just keep running ads for Marco Rubio and, you know, or doing spinning for, you know, Cory Gardner, you know, you name the person. And so in a lot

of ways, I felt like even though, you know, I landed in the correct place where they didn't on the matter of Trump and the enablers in the party, like our rationalizations for kind of continuing to do work that was not enriching, that was outside of our integrity, was the same. And so I kind of wanted to explain how I got caught up in that trap, because I think it explains why a lot, how a lot of these guys got caught up in that trap and still are fucking doing it seven years later. Yeah. I mean, it's an incredible examination of all the ways people compartmentalize their support for Trump, or I guess their political lives versus the things they essentially believe in. You do a great job of defining different groups of them and reading through it. I mean, you can talk about some of those groups if you want.

And also, you know, a lot of them. I held a lot of people you talked about in the book in contempt. I held a lot of people you talked about in the book in contempt. I think the folks that bugged me the most were people like someone you report on named Josh Holmes, who is a sort of a Mitch McConnell stooge who think they're so important that they're above, you know, the stink of Trump because they are somehow saving the country from him. Was there, like, as you went through this reporting, I could feel the frustration welling up in you in chapter. You write about it pretty honestly. Was there a type of person or like Trump enabler that ended up bothering you the most in the process? Oh, man. Yeah, there was. I just want to get into the Holmes thing really quick,

because I think it backs into kind of what we were just talking about. Like the most, before I talk about the thing that bothers me the most, I'm going to be positive for one second. Here we go. Pod Save America. One of the things that's been the most gratifying about the book and that I hope other people take from this is that I've heard from like Republicans who are working in, in politics right now who are using the same rationalizations I did to keep doing, you know, this work that we were talking about and that the people in this book would keep doing. They know Trump is bad. They see, they know, obviously they hated January 6th, but they're still whatever. They're a press secretary for a random Senator. And they're like, if my Senator

loses, some insane Senator will replace them. And they read this book and they're like if my senator loses some insane senator will replace them and they read this book and they're like man you made me feel really bad about myself but like in a good way right yeah and so that's why i felt that's why i thought that that part was like looking at my explaining my own actions was so important and then getting into the holmes's of the world like holmes is just like the uber alice like version of this right i mean he it's not like josh holmes this like five foot four like chamber of commerce brooks brothers republican like really wanted donald a donald trump autocracy right like i we are like obviously he doesn't okay but he is succeeding on you know in in continuing to work in the republican apparatus like beyond anyone's wildest imaginations like financially uh you know he uh he's he continues to do well he continues to be courted by top gop donors and campaign hands

and so like these guys though live in this culture where they don't have to do this examination that i did in this book because the the culture that they live in incentivizes not looking at themselves at all and actually attacking the people who challenge them right and and so i think this is the important corrupting part of of the dc culture obviously and and this we're talking about the republicans here in particular is like if somebody goes up to josh holmes at a bar and says like what the fuck are you doing man like you know this guy is bad like you know that this is dangerous like among holmes's friend group at that bar they would be like that guy's the jerk yeah right like that guy's the jerk for like puncturing the bubble

and then you know they all might be able to sort of do gallows humor about how trump's a buffoon and how they know he's a buffoon and, you know, whatever among themselves. But it's like this cozy little club, this cozy little culture where they don't feel like they're getting challenged. And one of the people, I didn't name everyone in the book because I wanted people to be honest who interviewed with me. One of these guys, like, says to me on background, he's like, you know, Tim, it's just like, I get so, I know Trump's an idiot. And I just get so mad because, you know, woke culture and everybody's judging me and my wife's friends are judging me. And they're calling me a racist. And it's like, I just, I feel like I'm left with no choice but to look at the one or two things that I like about Donald Trump and focus on those and focus on keeping my job. You know, because all these other folks out there are so mean to me.

I was like, I mean, you're on background here, but you know that I heard that, right? I mean, I will always know that you said that. That's really embarrassing. I was forced to like him. I'm forced by the left to like Donald Trump. But he felt comfortable saying that because they say that to each other, right? That's their rationalization. Yeah, that's their rationalization.

We got in this cozy place and that's where he felt comfortable with me. And that's what they all say to each other, right? That's their rationalization. Yeah, that's their rationalization. We got in this cozy place, and that's where he felt comfortable with me, and that's what they all say to each other. I mean, I think one of the categories of people that you described that's part of that D.C. culture that bothered me the most were the strivers. Yeah. And you write a chapter that's focused on Elise Stefanik, the congresswoman from New York. And you wrote that the excuse that all of her friends make is that she's just following the politics of her district, right? Which has become a little Trumpier. Now, there are times where I have actually bought that excuse or thought about that excuse myself, because I always thought the way this goes is the right wing media radicalizes Republican voters. And then Republican politicians just do what these radicalized voters want in order to keep their job.

And that's not, you know, like, that's still bad, but that's what they're doing. But you argue that with Stefanik, that's not the case. Like, can you explain why? Yeah. And this is, I called, this was the one time that Politico playbook has ever been useful. Because I went for, Elise wouldn't talk to me. She emailed me and said, I see your Twitter feed, so I'm not going to talk to you for this book. And I was like, ugh, okay.

Well, I knew Elise. We worked together at the RNC. And so I was like, okay, well, if I'm going to write this, I want to at least talk to her friends. And I looked at who went to her wedding in the book. And so I called all the people that went, all the Republican types that went to her wedding. And literally to a person, they all gave this same excuse. Like I just said, what happened to Elise? First question.

And so I was like, well, you know, this is what our voters want. It's what our voters want. But here, but there's a, there's a fundamental problem with that. The next district over from Elise is John Katko. Now John Katko might not be a perfect guy. Like the pod Save America listeners might not feel like, boy, do I love John Katko. Okay. But he, he voted to impeach Donald Trump. He was the one that said that he was going to do the January 6th committee before Kevin McCarthy pulled it. You know, he didn't go along with idiotic conspiracy theories about Ukraine and, you know, and the Biden crime family or whatever, at least Stefanik is saying these days. And he kept getting reelected. And he kept getting reelected in the same district. And so it's like, well, that wasn't it then. I mean, she could have kept getting reelected. I

think what was somebody going to primary her? Maybe she started tweeting like me. Yeah, she couldn't do that, but she could have survived. There are plenty of House Republicans that none of your listeners ever heard of that have survived not being brave, but not being a lease. What she wanted was something else. She wanted the rush. She wanted the brass ring. And she went after Liz Cheney and she got it. Like, that's the sad, this is also kind of a depressing book. I know. The sad part about all this that you have to deal with in therapy and yoga is that like, sometimes good things do happen to bad people, right? And so this worked for her. So what

actually motivated her was not, this is what her voters wanted. It was, if I want to maximize my power within the party, I have to act like this, right? Like this is how, you know, I can guarantee that I can unseat Liz Cheney. I can guarantee that I can go to events and get big cheers. You know, this happened to a lot of them. At least I wanted to use some other examples, but the least example is just so stark, like all the ones felt like lame by comparison. But Marco, the same thing happened to Marco, right?

Marco, remember in 2016 was like, I'm going to be a check on Trump or whatever. And because there are values. And then all of a sudden Trump comes to Florida and they has these rallies. And like, it's like, it's nothing like the Marco events, you know,

they're like these monster truck rallies. People are cheering for them and they're going crazy. And Marco's friends, I've asked them some that used to work for him. Like he just gets caught up in it. He got caught up in it. And he sees this, that,

that it's more than just like this, like I'm going to have to do the minimum the voters want. I want the voters to adore me and I want to get as much power as I can get. I think it's such an important point because we talk a lot about

like the culture and the larger forces that led to Trump. Yeah. As if individuals don't have agency and as if leaders don't have real influence. And it's sort of like what drove it home for me was just watching that last January 6th hearing

when Stephen Ayers, who was this random guy from Ohio who stormed the Capitol, was like, yeah, if Donald Trump had told me not to go, I wouldn't have gone. And you're like, oh, yeah, if a couple Republican leaders or Donald Trump and a couple people on Fox had just said, no, actually, Joe Biden won the election, which is the truth they all knew, then people wouldn't have died at the Capitol. Right. And, and let's look at this just really quick. This counterfactual had 10 more of them voted to convict him in the impeachment thing, which obviously 10 of them wanted to do. I, you know, you had Jay Mart on about his book. Many of them confessed it in private to Jay Mart in those following days had 10 of them done that.

Like we'd be done with this motherfucker. Like it be over right now and by the way the republican party would be fine you know like it's not even a long term you can't even sell me on this the voters demanded this this wasn't like we had to do this to save the gop bs everyone just moved on to ron desantis everyone would have just moved on to ron desantis and trump would have been an old fart truthing away by the pool with the Cougars, you know, and we could have dealt with the Ron DeSantis problems, which are different and they're, you know, their own category. But, but yeah, like actual choices do matter. Yeah. You know, you really hit on something that drives me crazy about Washington, which is, uh, politicians are talked about like they have no choice, like politics must drag them where they need to go. Right. Like they have no choice, like politics must drag them where they

need to go, right? Like they have no agency, like they can't do the principal thing. And the reason Elise Stefanik is such an interesting character in this, not to pick on her, but she deserves to be picked on, is that, you know, there's this 2012 GOP autopsy after Mitt Romney loses to Barack Obama that you worked on and you detail how that process went, who was a part of it. And, you know, you had former Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer pushing for more moderate positions on gay rights and on immigrations, demanding that the report be read aloud in Spanish to signal like an openness to the Latino community. You have Elise Stefanik literally authoring the report before getting elected as a moderate

congresswoman and then going full MAGA. I mean, I guess what was interesting to me about that report in that process was one, it just shows how all these people that went full MAGA truly, truly know better on a deep level, intellectually, morally, spiritually, but also that that report that was really celebrated at the time was a lot of wish casting from kind of a DC establishment class that maybe wasn't actually listening to the base that was like, no, no, no, no. We want to snort a line of InfoWars and red meat in like the base, really nasty stuff. Yeah. I thought there were two lessons from my reflection on the autopsy. The first is that a lot of people, particularly on the right, want the Trump question to be about policy,

right? And want it to be like, oh, Tim didn't go along with this because he's a rhino, right? And like, we went along with it because we realized we had to make some sacrifices in order to get these good policies that Donald Trump really so deeply cared about. And like, the autopsy shows that that is like not true at all, right? Like what divided the people who went along with Trump from didn't had nothing to do with policy. Later on, we might get to Liz Phair later in the book. She's like this hard line, insane conservative. And she quits eventually. And all the us and all these rhinos like Elise Stefanik are still in there. Liz Cheney is this prime example of this. So so it really like the choice to go on with Trump wasn't about policy. And so the book isn't about policy. It's about like these ethical and moral choices and rationalizations as far as the autopsy itself um i one other

counterfactual i look back on was kind of regret is i think our intentions were pure i guess to a certain degree that we like we did want the party to be nicer to immigrants and gays and more welcoming and and and everybody it confirmed our priors of all the people in the room that were writing that autopsy and that was sweet and nice. But like, we didn't listen to what the base wanted. And so where we went wrong is instead of dealing with that by actually addressing their grievances, right? Like the base's grievances weren't about immigration, like they weren't about immigration and not even the base or the working class voters that Trump appealed to. It was about the forever wars, it was about their communities being hollowed out, right? Like you could imagine an alternate autopsy that's like well you know it wouldn't have been tim miller's party but it

would have been like maybe we can be more protectionist right and maybe we can like be less globalist and maybe we can appeal to you know actually address your grievances and then maybe there wouldn't have been this vacuum for donald trump to come into i don't know that's like who knows but i i probably not probably not but it would have at least been a good faith try i wonder about that too because i think you say in the in the book that the autopsy reflects sort of the george w bush paul ryan view of the world right which includes like free markets and low taxes and those are things that you didn't want to touch right on the on the democratic side i like wish we could run against mitt romney again and paul ryan because i know that the positions we take vis-a-vis mitt romney and paul ryan are popular positions right but i do wonder like how to address sort of the

anger and the and the populism that's out there with that like the party of trump now knows how to address that with racism and xenophobia and all the bullshit. The question is, how does all of us, how do all of us who want to like protect democracy, whether you're never Trump or liberal, address that anger in a way that's different? I think that's the big question right now that I don't know that anyone has quite figured out. It's the Fetterman question, right? I think it's an interesting, it will be an interesting test case in Pennsylvania. And this is where, you know, I am. We're part of this all big happy family coalition that we're'm willing to be supportive of Fetterman against an insurrectionist fake doctor. the capitalist system unclear for me, like where Fetterman is on some things that I feel strongly about, but I'm, but I'm for it. And I do, and I think that this is an open question, like, can the Democrats

do what we didn't do in 2012, which is like channel these people's grievances in a legitimate way, right. And, and say, we're going to actually try to address your problems by doing X, Y, and Z, you know, with different economic policies and different changes, you know, and various things that these Republicans aren't going to go along with because they're all fake populists, right? Like they don't actually want to do anything. They're all phony. And I think that could, that wedge might work. It might not work. I don't know. But I think that the Fetterman is like the most stark, you know, a test case for this. Unfortunately, like these test case are pretty high stakes. Yeah. And it's, you know, the mood music is difficult for Fetterman, although I do think they're running a really good campaign.

I do too. initially was like, oh, this is all about disaffected working class voters. They were left behind by NAFTA, et cetera. I feel like the more data I read, it's like, actually, there's sort of like a hardcore white Christian nationalist base that has always been kind of like the beating heart of the GOP that people thought Trump wouldn't appeal to because they were like, oh, he's a disgusting sinner, misogynist, 10 divorces. And the reality is those people don't care as long as you further their agenda. Right. Like they want you. They want conservative judges. They want abortion overruled and they want to tell people like me to shove it. Right. I mean, that's kind of the piece. with this young white bro Republican, like bro Bible reading frat dude, right? And like, it seems like he's made being a Republican a fun subversive act. You know what I mean? Like being in the 60s, being anti-war

and pissing off your parents by going to Woodstock. Today it's like wearing a MAGA hat or, you know, sort of, I don't know, like supporting Trump in some way. Do you think I have a remotely accurate read on this trump in some way do you think i have a remotely accurate read on this and like do you think there's a way for the democratic party to reach these these younger white male voters because i feel like they're they're slipping away if not gone i don't think they're gone um i do think you have a good read on it now we're outside of the confines of the books i just want everybody to know if you don't like this upcoming opinion uh

you can still read and enjoy why we did it. We need to hear opinions we don't agree with on this show. This is OK. So here's my take. I worry about the Democrats. Look at just the abortion thing as a recent example. You have Dave Portnoy, who's the barstool guy, going out and saying, like, this is crazy. We're overturning Roe versus Wade. And, like, I don't, you know, I think women's chub rights,

you know, obviously some of the barstool Rogan crowd, they, you know, these bros aren't ready to be dads. Like, they can't even iron their shirts, okay? Like, they want to have freedom of choice in their, you know, if any, any situations that they have in relationships. And yet, like, are the Democrats even trying to talk to these people?

I just don't know, right? To reach out to that audience. Yeah, to reach that audience. Like, is there someone that is capable even, a prominent Democrat, of going on to one of those shows? I think Bernie tried with Rogan.

Yeah, yeah. And then he gets finger-wagged. He gets finger-wagged. Is that a Twitter phenomenon where Bernie gets out of that, whereas, you know, the actual audience you reach might be a lot larger? I never know. For sure. No, it's for sure it that a Twitter phenomenon where Bernie gets out of that, whereas the actual audience you reach might be a lot larger? I never know. For sure. No, it's for sure it's a Twitter phenomenon, but I think that the Twitter phenomenon is preventing candidates from trying, right?

Because they're afraid of getting browbeaten. And if they're like, oh, you're going with Portnoy, but he's a sexist and all that. I don't want to defend Dave Portnoy. I don't, I don't, I'm not interested in boobs. Like I don't listen to Barstool, right? Like, but like as a strategic matter, you know, trying to speak to these people, actual concerns and coalition build, I think is very important. Like particularly when the nature of the threat is so great. And like, that is where this does tie into the book. I felt like, you know, like we beat Donald Trump in 2020. I did our VAT and like we did the vote.

I could have just walked off the stage here and said, okay. Republican voters against Trump. This is actually very interesting. You should explain a little bit. Yeah. So we did Republican voters against Trump, which is an ad based campaign in 2020, where we had actual Republican voters say in their own words, why they were not voting for Donald Trump. Most of them were voting for Joe Biden. Some of them were just writing in. And then we tested to see which of those resonated with actual Republican voters. And we ran just ads that that, you know, were these real people talking that was not, you know, not cut, not, not produced ads, right. And we ran it and we ran it

to target, you know, Republican audiences to try to depress Trump's vote. And there's like some evidence this worked. And if you look at certain places in Wisconsin, people like voted for Biden, and then the Republican down ticket. So So anyway, I think that these sort of strategic approaches are necessary, you know, as part of a big coalition, given the nature of the threat, like it'd be one thing if it was Clinton and Dole, you know, and I would understand like the argument for like, actually, we need to make our party a little bit more pure and like move to the left and, you know, on these sorts of things. But like right now, like where are the areas of where you can draw a broader audience where you can appeal to ex-Republicans, where you can appeal to the bros,

who by the way, many of them used to be Democrats, who like, these are Obama-Trump voting, you know, the people, like how can we kind of penetrate this? And I do worry a little bit about the effort isn't there on that. And it's not just these bros that Tommy's talking about, too. It's like a broad swath of working class voters now of all races, not just white working class voters. Like I just I just did a focus group for the wilderness in Las Vegas with Hispanic working class voters who were like middle of the road. OK, some some Democrats, some Republicans, some independent. working class voters who were like middle of the road okay some some democrats some republicans some independent and like they're they were horrified by what the supreme court did on on

dobbs right so they think the republicans have been too extreme on a lot of these social issues but they're like i care about housing i can't afford rent i can't afford housing inflation gas and like who is what politician of either party is like speaking to my concerns right there was one there was one guy who had voted for biden who now said uh he's going to vote for ron he's he's he's favored uh ron desantis in 2024 but he also really likes aoc and i'm like i'm sorry i have to ask like what the fuck and he's like because she is an outsider and she takes on the system and there's on all these politicians are too cozy in washington it's all establishment i'm just looking for people to take on the system now okay you can say whatever you want about that view but there is this feeling that like people have all these

these concerns about like just their cost of living and their lives and no one is addressing them and no one seems like they're fighting for that and this should be an advantage this should be an area where the democrats can speak to these people because the republicans don't give a fuck about them which is why you get a lot of people who are just who are supposedly these middle-of-the-road swing voters who are like i do like bernie sanders right because someone like that is speaking to yeah exactly and that's and that's fine and and maybe and and like economic concerns like different people might have different things that they want to solve right like some people might want more uh you know you know better social services better and other people say well we need to drill more uh you know i mean like it's

not exactly uh you know one on the ideological spectrum right but here's the thing the republicans don't care about that stuff at all like all they're talking about is going back to 2020 and relitigating the last election and whether it was fraudulent or not and like hunter biden's laptop and like what like they're mitch mcconnell said that he doesn't have a uh uh agenda like that their whole agenda is stopping biden and so the problem is that these voters who are rightly frustrated are like sending all their frustration at the at the party in power which like makes sense and so so that has to you know that has to be disrupted in some way by by demonstrating to them that,

no, okay, we're actually trying to address the problem. These guys are the ones that don't want to do anything. There's sort of two parts of your comments. There's a message issue and there's a medium issue. I do agree that we do need a Bernie Sanders or anyone else, frankly, to go on a Joe Rogan and try to reach his audience. And although he said abhorrent things about many communities, we should try to talk him in, explain to him why

that's wrong and explain to his audience why that's wrong. And frankly, as you're sitting quite literally in a liberal safe space, like that's a message I've been trying to take to heart more these days, but it's also, you know, a message thing like, and the book I think really captures the power and allure and danger of you know like only caring about your team and tribalism and resentment of the other side because you know when you think about climate change you've got a bunch of republicans who would literally rather live in an uninhabitable planet and hand up uninhabitable planet to their kids than admit that annoying libs like me are were right to care about the polar bears you know what i mean and

yeah you're right driving around in your prius with your coffee coolada your paper straw just not a liberal elite yeah in the book someone suggested a coffee coolada that dunkin donuts is a liberal elite thing but again like i mean so is your do you think that a a republican voters against trump style campaign where you have a bunch of republicans who say i used to not believe in climate change but this is why i do that might be a more effective way to peel voters away because i do worry that you know like i i think that a lot of democrats just get tuned out the minute they start talking because there's a d next their name yeah or i mean i also think there's a substance issue but well i'm litigating all my complaints with the level i'm coming to this safe space to tell you all the things that you

guys are annoying me about um uh despite the fact that you know i'm with you i'm i'm i vote for gavin newsom like 17 times because of all the recalls unfortunately being a self-loathing democrat is kind of par for the course so welcome to the team but okay but also substance like on the on the abortion stuff on the reconciliation can Can't we pull some of this stuff out and hit the Republicans on the fact? Because they're going to block everything. All of the popular items in BBB, can we not just pick one of them and say, okay, we're going to run on this? And if Joe Manchin and the Republicans are the ones that vote no, then run against Joe Manchin and the Republicans? Or maybe Joe Manchin will get off the House vote and decide that he'd vote for that one thing?

Or make Ron Johnson vote up or down on whether a teenager should have the right to an abortion. Right. Like I can't, so I think that there's a substance part of this. There also is a messenger. And anyway, I guess my more, my only point on the messenger thing is unfortunately it's going to take imperfect, imperfect messengers to break through to these people. And like the lesson from the book is if we don't like cultivate that, then someone else is going to do it that isn't going to be great. Right. And so, you know what I mean? Like we were not, the Republican, I'm not saying that there will be a Democratic Trump. What I am saying is like a Republican establishment was not messaging the things that people cared about. And the

voters were starting to tune us out and we're like, hey, here's another dose of Jeb. You know, and it's like, and Donald Trump came along and was like, no, F you. I'm going to go with this guy. That, I think, could happen in the, like, center left, right, where the Democratic primary gets disrupted by somebody that is a little bit more irreverent, by somebody that is a little bit more irreverent, that is speaking more to this big center that people do listen to. So I do think finding different kind of messengers

who are going to be responsible about it is something that should happen. It requires a megaphone too, though, right? I thought a really interesting part of the book is when you talked about how center-right media publications, media outlets, like you talked about um how center right media publications media outlets like you talked about the independent journal review yeah failed because they weren't giving the base what they really wanted yeah and and and you can you contrasted that with breitbart which just gave

them all the all the good stuff which is bad stuff no here's the post book scary thing about how the conservative media thing goes i get a call from a Breitbart reporter after the book, read the book, said, I really got it. You know, because I recently said I got it because I understood that it was the Breitbart was the tail that was dragging like the Josh Holmes. You know, all the Josh Holmes guys think that they're in charge, but they're not. Like, it's the Breitbart comment section that is in charge. And, you know, you might be in charge on these random little issues, that nobody cares about but on the major things they're getting dragged along by the base this guy calls me and says but here's the weird thing you missed is that during January 6th Bright Bart this was self-identified we were responsible actually because we just talked

about the drop boxes you know we didn't go along with all the real crazy stuff like Venezuela you know but he's not responsible for January 6th, responsible actors. Yeah, responsible actors, but as compared to like OAN and Newsmax and Gateway Pundit. And the people that were advising the president. Yeah, the people that were advising the, like they were outflanking Breitbart.

And so this is this kind of death spiral that the right has gotten into, right? And that is true about what you, John, said earlier about how it's like the right-wing media is feeding the base's anger, like the base's anger is feeding the politicians, and there's nobody that is breaking that cycle. And instead, what you have is this, quote-unquote, center-right, like to the extent that exists anymore, media outlets have either gotten sucked fully all the way in to being know, to being complicit in that, you know, or are just total kind of niche outliers. You know, I went on like the Dispatch podcast, gotta love those guys, and said this, and, you know, Stephen Hayes is like, you're calling me niche? I'm like, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it as an insult, but like, yeah. I

mean, like the idea that there are, you know, that a media outlet on the right can survive by being, you know, more in the center and more moderating, it just isn't there. And, you know, that a media outlet on the right can survive by being, you know, more in the center and more moderating. It just isn't there. And, you know, so that's dragging the whole process along. Look, you know, you brought up abortion as an issue electorally a few times. I mean, Roe versus Wade is overturned. Clearly, now states are passing the most draconian anti-abortion laws they can possibly pass in many instances. There is talk of trying to pass a federal abortion ban. There's reporting today in The New York Times about women who are having miscarriages, not getting life-saving care

when they need it because there is a fear that it might be called, quote unquote, an abortion, create legal liability, like literal fucking nightmare horror scenarios, right? Like my wife and I went through some tough things earlier this year and the thought of going to the hospital with her when she was having a miscarriage and being told, you know, we got to hit pause on this and we, you know, see where this goes before we could write. Like, it makes me want to fucking murder somebody. Right. And so I guess my question is, like, do you think that the broad the party is in a place where they might start to read some of these stories and see some of these laws and think, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This has gotten more extreme than we wanted? Or is all of this really just about owning the libs and telling people what to do and controlling women's bodies and controlling people that are not in their in-group?

I don't see any evidence that there's going to be a whoa, whoa, whoa. And unfortunately, because what John was talking about earlier, Republicans might get the message in the midterms that they can act with impunity on this issue, you know, like that they don't, they're not going to suffer any political damage from it at all if the Republicans have a good midterm. So this is, and then you run into a 2024 situation where, you know, there might be a competition. You know, you see DeSantis and Abbott and like trying to outdo each other, right, on these restrictive bills. So, no, I mean, I think that if we understand and what I wrote about in the front end is I think we created this monster in a lot of ways but if the driving motivation of the republican base is grievance is is if the and this is one big difference between the republican base and the democratic base it's like the democratic base have actual policy prescriptions that they would like to see

implemented at this point the republican base like doesn't they got nothing right it's like very nihilistic it's like we want to see the left punished we want to see these women and their purple hair punished we want to see immigrants punished and the media punished and the pod save america fuckers and the cucks and right like i mean the absence of any platform at the 2020 convention sort of said it all right there from that point on there was there was there's no policy driving the driving so that is the driving factor like the question is okay are there enough responsible you know republicans in certain places to try to do but like like, where is the evidence of this? Right.

I do think that, you know, could the Democrats cobble together? You'd have to get 10, right? Like 10 Republicans to sort of moderate this, this thing in the Senate. Like, who are they? Like, who are the 10 Republicans? Like, you could get three, maybe. But that's why, like, as frustrating as it can be on the Democratic side to be like, oh, keep voting and keep focusing on elections, stuff like that. The only thing that Republicans are going to understand is getting beaten.

There's going to be no moral change of heart here. No. If politically they start losing, like if they don't have a great midterm or if they have a midterm that's not as good as they thought, then maybe they think, ah, some of those positions that we took on abortion might be too extreme. They're not going to think about it because now they suddenly had a change of heart. But if suddenly they start losing, yeah, then maybe they'll think about it, which is why they have to be defeated. That's the only way. Yeah, and unfortunately the system is biased in their favor.

Of course. And so, you know, you have to really defeat them in order to get a message. And obviously Trump is a prime example. He loses the election but, like like wins this electoral college victory so i i i all this is where i think how can this fight be taken into and this is maybe a place where the never trumpers can we can provide a constructive help to the to the coalition here is like completely giving up on a place like ohio or you know like in these iowa there's a senate seat yeah right now the admiral franken the admiral franken is a great candidate and chuck grassley who is not it's grassley's below 50 in the des moines register poll for like the

first time i keep getting hit up by friends in iowa and i'm like well the mood music is bad and inflation is high and i'm like what have i become that i know i know people are like you guys left off tim ryan what's wrong with tim ryan i'm like you know what great no right right tim ryan he has a fighting chance and and he raised seven million more dollars than jd vance it's going to be a tough year but i i i think that on the democrats might need to start thinking a little differently about this. And this isn't voters' responsibility. This is all y'all's old friends' responsibility of like, how can we win in some of these places and not just like sit around and complain about the tyranny of the minority, which is legitimate, you know. Are there different types of candidates that might be able to appeal? I think Tim Ryan's run a good campaign.

I'm interested in this Admiral Franken's campaign in Iowa. I think that there are different types of candidates. But I think that the best case scenario is, and our A-block is our good friend Joe Manchin, is rather than being like F Joe Manchin to hell, the best case scenario is probably like nine joe mansions right like who all have their own horribleness that you have to deal with in different ways i'm sorry this is this is a nightmare this is a nightmare but i know your eyes like nine joe mansions would put the democrats in a much stronger position than zero well for those who have just started paying attention when when trump became president like that used to be obama's majority when everyone everyone's like Obama had 60 votes for three months, there were nine Joe Manchins.

Why didn't you save the country in those three months, John? And they were all really annoying, but they were all really annoying in all their own individual ways. And we were able to cobble, trade different things together to like get some shit done. It's actually,

sometimes it's harder with one Joe Manchin than with 60, and then you have a bunch of moderates. So somehow Sean Spicer turns out to be a more pathetic individual than I thought. Which is a high bar. I know, which I think I take as really high praise, because you had to go into this thing like, there's nothing you could tell me about Sean Spicer that would make me go,

ooh. That's exactly what happened. I mean, you talk about how his underlings at the RNC, he made his staffers at the RNC call every campaign and get signed paraphernalia. Then he put it up on the wall and he said lent by the courtesy of Sean Spicer. Then he tried to start a tie business from the RNC and make staff do this. Can you please tell us more about this? was really important because the book is dreary. You know, I go through and self-flagellate myself and like go through all of the things that I missed that I should have seen. And then I go through

all of these really noxious, horrible characters who use these ridiculous rationalizations for themselves. And I only have one character that even has like a glimmer of hope. So I was like, I feel like everybody

needs a little comic relief. You know, it's just like halfway through the book, it's like, let's do a little sean spicer staff but yeah because he is a key this is you have to admit there's some democrats like this maybe not in the pathetic sense but sean spicer fits a mold in dc oh yeah super nerd yeah super nerd uh he in college he was called sean sphincter by the school paper stuff that hurts his roommate says when people entered the room they he would enter the room

at a party, people would kind of go, ugh, Spicer. I read that in an old interview about Sean Spicer from 20 years ago in the Connecticut College magazine. This is the journalism

I was doing. It's tough. I was like, that hurts. And so he gets to D.C. and all of a sudden you're the RNC communications director and Jeff Zucker's calling you and Jake Tamper's calling you

and boy, now I'm a man about town and I'm really kind of enjoying this little mini celebrity. He's in the mix. Right, I'm in the mix. Little mix. And so I'm this like nerd, you know, I'm like a member in the Simpsons when Martin like got the pool in the summer

and he's like, I'm the king of summer. All the cool kids are coming over to my pool. It's hot out. Like this is Spicer. And so, you know, a lot of people are like, well, why would the establishment Republican guy go be Trump's first press secretary? And I was like, well, why wouldn't he? They used to call him Sean Sphincter. Now he gets to be on TV every day.

And, you know, all of his mom's friends are, you know, calling saying, hey, look at your boy. He done good, right? And so that is like the nature of Sean. And it was true even from the time that I worked there. And I do have one little additional thing to share. Nice. Well, it's nice. I have a postscript to the book. So this story where he put this little Brown's placard up in the RNC that said, graciously donated by Sean Spicer, these mementos that he made his staff work on. This was, by the way,

during the 2012 campaign that all this was happening. So we had some important work that we were doing, campaigning against you guys. But so he has these little placards made up, graciously donated by Sean Spicer. And I did find out that

a fellow nerd revenger who was upset that Sean was getting so much attention snuck into the RNC one night and took them down off the wall. And so that is why a question in the book was whatever happened to the graciously donated Plackett? And I did find out the answer by a reader. Well, I think what's interesting about the Sean Spicer archetype and why it's important to understand him is that we think of him as a buffoon who was made fun of on snl and couldn't talk at briefings but his anger and frustration at his mistreatment and then his ascension manifested in being cruel to everyone around him and putting the rest of us down and i do think it's actually worrisome to have that kind of character in charge or in

a powerful role, right? Because he's not, he's not a hapless idiot. He's kind of a vindictive, nasty guy who was doing bad things. And this was unique to Trump's in a way, like something that was maybe unique is the wrong word, but particularly acute in Trump's Washington. Like among the different categories of characters, know people who are striving people who want to be in the room where it happened you know people um uh that like inertia drove them up their career up like that that happens across sure you know a lot of industries this was the trump thing is like these guys

wanted revenge on you guys right like they want he wanted revenge on you and on establishment republicans they all had an obama thing yeah yeah they had a real deep deep well of hatred for obama i didn't quite realize like i i knew it was i thought it was kind of performative it was like you know we're all doing this wwe thing um but they really hated obama um they hated the the elites they hate that the media is nicer to Democrats. They hate, uh, you know, obviously there's a racial subtext to, to all of this stuff. Um, and so, you know, when you have these people that were, that, that gain this huge power inside Washington and you get in this bunker, every white house has a bunker mentality, but this is like the deepest bunker mentality ever, right? Like all of these popular people hate us. Like we were all nerds. We were

rejects. We were deplorables. We were hobbits. And so we were all nerds we are rejects we are deplorables we are hobbits and so we're gonna we're gonna be really we're gonna take it out on them it's revenge yeah and so and and i think that the entire that drove so when adam server does like the cruelty is the point like there was there was one group of washington for whom cruelty is the point like the stephen miller you know your actual anti-immigrant bigots but there was another group for whom the cruelty was the point where it was much more interpersonal. It was like, I hate you guys who got, who get more retweets from famous people than me. And clearly like vengeance and grievance is going to drive the entire 24 races.

Oh my God. That's the whole, that's gonna be the whole campaign. And just a thought on that, like, as we, for me, as we conclude here, I mean, I think the book is really good and it's really worth reading. And it is dark at times. Like there's a path, part of the end where you're trying to understand from a good friend

who was such like a seemingly kind-hearted person that she traveled to Iraq for 10 days to build homes for LGBT kids and then worked for Donald Trump. Like the most, like holding those two things in your mind is almost impossible. So it's really worth reading to sort of understand those people, even if you don't

come to get them, you sort of do a great job of categorizing and explaining them. But I also think it's worth reading just to talk about incentives because, you know, you became anti-Trump, you gave up your career, you dumped your party, you walked away from your business, you became anti-Trump. And then I think the net effect for you was you got attacked by Republicans. And then also I think often attacked by progressives for not being liberal enough or people you had worked for in the past. And I do think one of the lessons from studying fights against fascism from around the world is that the efforts that are successful are the ones where we build the broadest possible coalition to defeat the authoritarian fascist candidate. And I do think that is going to be from Bernie and the socialist left to never Trumpers on the right.

And it's just something we all have to keep it like we should fight it out about policy and we should disagree and never put down our principles. But I do think like there is a real looming threat that we're all facing right now. We're not able to have the policy fight if there's no democracy. That's the we can all have the policy fight one you know when when democracy is preserved but right now it's sort of on the absolutely i just want to say this as being somebody who's been and i'm not a victim here i appreciate you said that to me i don't like people can be mean to me on twitter i can take it uh but like even me i feel this way right there's always you want to be the one in the door that you're like i deserve credit okay like i i voted for hillary

all right like you know like i want like somebody give Okay, like I voted for Hillary. All right, like, you know, like I want, like somebody give me a cookie, you know? And now like these assholes, like I get this even. So I sure as hell get how people on the left get it. Right now, these assholes who want to come out of the administration and like write these books, you know, sometimes I get weak on Twitter and attack them, right?

And sometimes they deserve attack, especially if they're not going to oppose Trump in 2024. That's my red line still. But for the ones who are trying in good faith, and this is why the only hopeful character in the book is Alyssa Farah, who went on to be Trump's communications director and knew he was bad when she took the job

and justified it in all these myriad ways. And I decided to write about her because I thought bad about her. And I even hate tweeted her. And she said that when I reached out to the interview, she's like, I don't know if I should do this. I saw this tweet that you sent about me about, you know, about some interview I did when I came out. But like, I came to find again, this is not a perfect person. None of us are perfect people. But this was a person that was seriously grappling with this and trying to do the right thing. And, and, you know, when there are allies in this fight

who are seriously grappling with this and trying to do the right thing, but might have problematic either pasts or opinions on certain things, like trying to figure out ways to work together on this, I do think the incentive part of this matters. And, and I, and I recognize more than anyone how hard that is because I'm tempted sometimes to not, uh, to, you know, to not be a good faith actor, not, not a good fit, to not be a positive actor on that front. And we should be. I sometimes think if I, if I met me through my Twitter feed, I would hate myself. So, you know, all of us, a lesson for all of us at this time. Well, a lot of books written about, uh, Republicans and why they did what they did. But I think that you sort of nail the psychology better than any book that I've read.

And it's complicated. Humans are complicated, as you say. And I think you nail that really well in the book. The book is Why We Did It, A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell. Everyone, go read it. Tim Miller, thank you for joining the pod. Everyone, go buy the book, Why We Did It. Thanks, gents.

Thanks for being here. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner-Bernstein. Our producer is Haley Muse, and Olivia Martinez is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis sound engineer the show.

Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Sandy Gerrard, Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montooth. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash crooked media.