The Daily Stoic - Tim Miller on Political Games and Building Integrity

Episode Date: September 21, 2022

Ryan talks to political consultant and writer Tim Miller about his new book Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell, the game of American politics, how to maintain integrity in your work, and more.Tim Miller is a former Republican communications operative who held moderate views and backed moderate candidates for years. But he says in practicing the arts of opposition research and planting negative stories about rival candidates, he worked with increasingly extreme right-wing media outlets and fed populatist outrage that would radicalize much of the Republican voter base. Tim examines this and considers why so many Republicans who thought Trump unfit for office nonetheless backed him, in his new book, Why We Did It. Tim is an MSNBC analyst, writer-at-large at The Bulwark, and the host of “Not My Party” on Snapchat. Tim was communications director for Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign and spokesman for the Republican National Committee during Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign. He has since left the GOP and become one of the leaders of the “Never Trump” movement. 📕Pre-order Ryan Holiday's new book "Discipline Is Destiny" and get exclusive pre-order bonuses at https://dailystoic.com/preorder ✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom every day life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us dailystow.com. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target,

the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. holiday, welcome to another episode of The Daily Soap Podcast. It's kind of unbelievable to me now. That I wrote Trust Me Online within 10 years ago. Really 11 years ago because I wrote it in 2011. And I think about who I was then, I sort of knew what stoicism was. I knew it, but I just wasn't there yet. It was a process for me. As I think it was for Seneca, I wrote a piece about this in the New York Times, fears ago, about Seneca and his odd political choices. But I look back at that person and I have trouble understanding who they were, what was motivating

them, what they were thinking, what they saw and some of the people that they worked with. It's me, but it's, I don't know, I definitely slapped that person around a little bit. Be like, what do you think, and dude? So I'm interested in people who have gone on similar journeys. Like lots of that book holds up well. Like the facts of what is an epic holds up well, but who I was as a person isn't someone I feel like holds up well, but who I was as a person isn't someone I feel like holds up. Well, but I'm interested in people who have undergone that journey, who have undergone it in

public, who have turned away from things that were lucrative or rewarding, who have changed their mind about things, who have spoken up about things to me. That's so many of the different stoke virtues. That's courage. That's self-discipline, it's wisdom. It's also most of the time rooted in justice. It's about speaking truth to power. It's about seeing something and saying something. It's, as Nassim Taleb has said, if you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud. And part of the reason I wrote the book, I feel like, comes from a better place. I was speaking up about something like, who I was some of the things I was talking about, even some of the things I still wasn't fully able to see for what they were, was because there was a part of me that was not rooted in truth. So I was really interested in Tim Miller's book, Why We Did It,

a travel log from the Republican road to hell. Tim Miller was a political operative, even putting this on what political party he was. He was just, they call it the game, right? He was a very common figure in Washington. A mercenary, you might say, a cog in the machine. He worked in opposition research. He planted negative stories about rival candidates.

He worked with increasingly extreme media outlets. He fed the outrage machine. You know, this is, this is the swamp, right? Again, whatever political party you're a part of, this is the swamp, right? Media swamp, political swamp, the Washington swamp. And so I think it's really remarkable that he had a kind of a change of heart. He had an awakening.

It's not a magical epiphany. It wasn't for me with Trust Me Online. I mean, even what drove me to write the book and then who I am 11 years later, it's a process. But the book is really interesting. It's really important. I think this conversation is important, especially if you're young and talented or working your way up through an industry. You can get so caught up in what's good for you that you don't fully see how what's good for you is really bad in a lot of ways for the world. Today, Tim is an MSNBC analyst, a writer at large at the Bullwork and the host of Not My Party on Snapchat.

He was communications director for Jeb Bush's 2016 presidential campaign and a spokesman for the Republican National Committee during Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign. He has since left the GOP and become one of the leaders of the Never Trump movement. He and I are similar similar age, similar experiences, similarly have young kids. I really enjoy this conversation. Check out his new book Why We Did It.

I think it's really important. I wish Sanica had written a book called Why I Did It Why I Work for Nero. It would be illustrative. But for now, all we can do is speculate and talk about some of these things now. And that's why I bring you this conversation with Tim Miller. You can follow him on Twitter at Tim ODC, T-I-M-O-D-C, and check out his new book, Why We Did It. Well, I thought we should start with a thing both you and I have grappled with, which is this idea that just because you're good at something and just because you're getting paid a lot of money to do it or you can potentially make a lot of money doing it does not mean that's what you should spend your life doing.

Yeah, that's a harder realization than it seems. That seems very obvious, doesn't it? Yeah, like on its face, this is the kind of thing they teach you and your kid, but it's one of thing they teach you when you're a kid. But it's honestly that you teach your eight-year-olds not to do something that's outside your integrity, but then all of a sudden when you become 18 and you start teaching your 18-year-old something different,

right, which is that you should be ambitious. And then if you're good at the skill, you should pursue it. And then you get into career life. And one of the things that I really hope the way I did with this book is that some of these themes are universal. It's not just in politics where people work outside their integrity because they're competitive

because they want to succeed because they want to feel the pay for their kids' college fund. This is something that happens across the board. And I very much spent too long in my opinion, well, anytime is too long, but I spent embarrassingly too long going along with this view of, man, I'm really good at Whitty Bonn Moths. I'm really good at attacking people.

I'm good at finding a new story that can define an opponent. I'm good at narratives and messaging and because I'm good at finding a new story that can define an opponent. I'm good at narrative and messaging and because I'm good at that and because that is incentivized in the field that I chose, I don't need to think about whether or not I should be doing that. That's my job and the culture of other people in that job was such that incentivized conformity. It doesn't incentivize being a turret in the punch bowl. Yeah, it's ironic that I'm gonna quote Peter Teo here

and we'll get some more of that later, but he said something about the college admissions game once that really stuck with me, which he said something like, you can get so caught up in trying to win a game that you don't ask yourself whether it's the right game, right? And I think that's what happens is you get in, like, especially early in your career, you're attracted to this field of that field.

It seems exciting. It seems new. Maybe it's the only thing available to you in your in it. And then you start to figure out how it works. You start to figure out the rules of that game. You start to figure out who's at the top, who's at the bottom. What are the ways to get ahead in that thing. And then that becomes the entirety of your world.

You lack the context or the perspective to be able to go like, well, do I admire the people who are at the top of the game? Is that who I want to be? Is this having a positive impact in the world or a negative impact in the world? You're just thinking like today, what is the miniature game inside the game that I'm playing that I can win? Like today's news cycle, how can I win that?

And you're not going like, hey, is there something inherently bad or corrupt or stupid about trying to do that at all? And that's where I think you get stuck. Yeah, especially once you get on a track, right? Like there's a game, a competitive now, this element to it, and there's an inertia element of this, right? Like we do, I may be overstayed when I said 18,

we don't incentivize 18 year olds. We kind of do incentivize 18 year olds. You're a freshman in college, you're trying to think about what's right, you know, what you should do, your idealistic, but very, you know, so those that go to college, but for very, very soon after that, you get on this track. And the teal segment, and then you get inside this game, and now all of a sudden, you're like, man, how can I manipulate it to my favor

and to get to the top of it? And this is true, I think, across the board. And politics, I think it's just specifically stark because politics is also literally a game. We called it the game, and this was like the first half of my book, if I'd broken that into sections, it would have been part one of them called the game, because that's how we all refer to politics. He's in the game, he's out of the game, he's playing the game well. But in a lot of senses, it literally is a competition, in the sense that it is. And so that is. That makes this even more attractive of a mindset to people in politics in a way that's more pernicious because you do have a win and a loss at the end. Even in these other businesses where there's a Wall Street, there are plenty of other businesses

we can talk about where there's a gamification element to it, but in politics it's like direct. You have a win lost record that every other November. And so, you know, it starts to, I wrote in the book about how the person that literally at the campaign school, at the first campaign school, where they teach you how to do campaigns, the one thing that stuck with me was, was my teacher said, you know, the best thing people can say about you in politics is that you get it. And what does you get it mean? It's not that you get how important it is

that we're doing here. And you get the, like really, the, you know, that the long tail factor of this is public service. You get it means you get the gain, you get how to manipulate it, you get how to play it. You're not gonna let other stuff bother you. You know, you're to focus more on success. It needs your properly cynical, right?

Like properly cynical. Yeah, exactly. You're properly cynical. Yeah, that's, I think that's the other thing that I found, especially early on in my career, which is like, even if I was intellectually aligned with a certain group, that was way too big picture, right? I wasn't thinking like, hey, do I think this is a good cause or that's a bad cause? Do I think this is right? This is wrong, et cetera. It's more like in the sense it's a game where it's like, I am playing against another person and I have come to not like that person or not respect that person, you find a way essentially to dehumanize or to

depersonalize the consequences of what you're doing and you're just thinking about am I winning or are they losing, right? And in this case, whether it's the new cycle or placing the story or starting the span or just like you think about people who are just sort of like pranksters, they're just like, did I make myself laugh, right? Like did I pull one over on someone that you're not, you've depersonalized it to the point where you're not thinking about this is happening in the real world. This is not, there is not another person on the other side of this.

You, you get it in the sense that you've, we've all decided to accept that this is not real, but it is real. Right. It's very real. It's a whole point. And the worst part of the politicians is we're all so bump-shiss, we call it public service. I'm like, we're in public service. There's nothing more real than public service. Now, the prime example of this is about the ideological element of it. And I think it's so important to understand just how pernicious this political game's and chip mindset is, I write about going back, I was always just for people that don't know me listening. I was always a moderate or a Republican.

You know, they call this Rhino's, socially level on gay. Like, you know, I was not an ideological hardliner. And yeah, as an upper research guy. So a lot of times in the prime, in these political primaries, I would be, you know, our biggest threats would be the other moderates.

And so in a lot of occasions, I read about books three times, I worked with and alongside teamed up with people that I found despicable, like radical, extreme, because we had a mutual enemy in this case. We could both, I would say, we'll deal with this other, third second candidate later, we're gonna work together, and then we'll have a more ideological fight down the road. But this real enemy is the first and it's actually closer to me.

2012, I read about this, it's a lot of modern Republicans like Mitch Daniels. And I basically ended Mitch Daniels' presidential campaign, at least that's what the people say. I find that kind of hard to believe in retrospect, but because I gave it once a journalist like the contact info of his wife had broken up with them, got into a new relationship,

then they got them back together. And so that other man's then wife hated the Daniels, right? So, you know, it's just this kind of love quadrangle, love square, what is a love triangle with four people, love square. And so I gave the phone number of one of the people that hated the Daniels and this love square to a bunch of reporters and this gets out in the news. And then Daniels eventually says, you know, the politics is too Yucky for me. I don't want to run. I don't you know probably somebody that that was that sensitive You know wasn't gonna win the presidency in the first place

So I you know, I don't want to overstate my but my point that I write about the book and reflecting on all this is like Unbalanced Mitch Daniels was like the next best person from someone with my ideology to John Huntsman You know, but because the game required me taking him out, I had no qualms. No, I didn't consider whether I was playing the right game to use the peel of treat or teal quote. I just think that's just a very stark example of what you're talking about. It ends up having someone else win that's more against what my ideology is. Yeah, and we often justify our cynicism or our sketchiness by the fact that the other

people are cynical or sketchy, right? Right. Sure. Like, because there's multiple games being played. I remember when I would think about, like, I think about what I'm doing as a public relations person, and I go, but these journalists don't care that all they care about are pages. They are playing their own screwed up game that is ethically corrupt and broken. And I think Dan Arieli, the psychologist, is talking about this idea of what's really dangerous

is when people just say fuck it, right? When they're like, fuck it, I don't care, because everyone else is said fuck it, and that's kind of contagious. I think that's the real dangerous place you get where everyone's like, everyone else is corrupt, so I'm gonna embrace the corruptness, and like, where is that? Where is that leave? We have a word for this, right? Now in politics, this is really scary, actually.

This is when I look at, this is where I feel like I'm the old man. I can look back at my attitude, which was very cynical, but it's not comparative. It's this kind of phrase that became popularized right now on the right, which is like this LLL nothing matters. But it's like there's this big troll, LLL nothing matters. Like if these people that you never imagined could win office and given what's happening on the internet

and these fights, like why care about this? And there's this anonymous Twitter person named comfortably Smellig is very famous who kind of just represents this ethos, which is just like, I'm not even, I don't even try to call me out on the fact because I'm not even presenting myself as someone that's trying to present the fact. It's just LL nothing matters.

This is all just competition. So that's obviously they're always gonna be man, baby trolls out there in the industry, right? But to your point about what, you all, you said to the psychologist. Yeah, about how addictive that is. That now has spread like wildfire. And when I talk to 24, 25, 26-year-old strategist, staffers who like are reading my book or seeing me in the news and say, I don't know what to do with my life. And I asked them like this, the LL nothing matters mindset is what

is what has expanded throughout campaign life right now. To the point where, you know, it's not like they're saying, oh, my colleagues are extremists or wild eyed or they believe all these conspiracy theories. It's like they're nihilists. Yes. And that is cool. Like, and that is the cool posture to have. Yeah, I remember I was working on something, AJ Delario, the editor at Gokker who ends up being sued for $100 million by Peter Teo and sort of blows up the site for some of the stuffy rights.

He's the one that publishes that whole Cogan tape. I remember he had written something about someone I worked for, and I was like, dude, come on. Like, you know none of this is true. Why did you write this? And he said something like, I thought you knew this was all professional wrestling, right? And that, but really hit me.

It was like, oh, Kaffee. That's what I'm going to say. Yeah, we've decided that this is not real, but it is real. And that I think it's when you have the realization that, Oh, actually, what I'm doing does have consequences in the real world. Or just, Hey, life is too short to work at something that sucks or makes you unhappy.

It that's like kind of taking your own red, that's like taking a different red pill, where suddenly you're like, shit, I don't know if I can keep doing this. Yeah, and unfortunately, I had to have just this kind of anvil dropped on me in order to realize this. Like, I don't know, my story is not,

you know, I put on a hair shirt in this book. Like, my story is not one of like someone who just had this big moral wakening. I'm not tall enough to horse to Damascus. It's just, obviously, it came very real. You know, like I said, I'm gay. I have a, like, I, we have a knocked daughter, like I'm starting to hear kind of the rhetoric,

and you know, I go from being this kind of man child and looking, I mean, you know, it sort of parallels by coming out story in a lot of ways, but I come just closeted, patch it man, right? And then all of a sudden it's like, oh my God, like this kind of rhetoric that people are using, now I'm imagining my kid,

having to hear that and like sing it through their eyes instead of this like privilege, man boy image. And obviously, like some of the real life impacts that we've seen over the past five, six years. And so that's what opened me up to. The thing about the book and why it's called why we did it, that I really felt like I needed to do was one, it's kind of look back on it and I told and explain how that had happened to me. But then try to understand, like, how is it still

going on? Right? You know, on the one hand, you know, it's like, you would think that, How is it still going on? Right? I mean, on the one hand, you know, it's like, you would think that, that just the manifests craziness of the last seven years of our politics. And you wrote this book, what was it, 10, 5, 10 years ago now?

I wrote it in 2011, if you can believe it. Right. And so you see it all in 2011. So now we're 11 years later. I mean, just think about the madness, like people are showing the capital, whatever it is that you think is crazy in the world. And yet still 90, 95% of my former colleagues kind of have maintained the same mindset. And so I really just tried to understand like what these, like how they were rationalizing that.

Yeah, that was one of the things that struck me, it was going like, okay, I'm not that good at this, right? Like I'm not like, I'm not like, I don't see myself as— I'm replaceable, I'm replaceable. Yeah, I'm pretty good, I'm replaceable. But I don't see myself as doing anything that's not that's that hard, right? And so it struck me like I'm doing it, I'm starting to come to terms with the fact that some of the stuff I'm doing, I'm not super proud of, it's weird in me out. But I go, look, I'm helping a fashion company over here, an author over here, and it strikes

me that somebody really bad could do this. Somebody who has no moral compass whatsoever, if I'm like, hey, I just placed a story in the New York Times around something that I utterly manufacture from nothing. And the upside for me is like, we're measuring this in the thousands of dollars, right? What could a really bad person or an insane person do? To me, the wake up call, it's sort of the reverse of what Kant talks about. It's like, do everything as if, you know, it was to become universal law.

It's sort of like, shit, what if everyone was doing what I was doing, or if really bad people were doing what I was doing? Like, I would not want to live in that world. Yeah, the entropy of it all. And just the, how easy is to go to the tactics that you were using? And I was like, I'm ready.

Your book is just, it was really hitting me. Just like was like, I'm really, your book is just, was really hitting me just like, like we all, how I described it in the book is, I felt like I had these kind of imaginary red lines if there are norms right to your point. Like I was pretty good at it and I was not, I certainly used immoral tactics, but I wasn't, you know, completely making up

fabrications about other people, right? I wasn't using racist shit. Like, you know, like there were certain, like, money from a foreign power or the KKK or something. Yeah, and so I had certain red lines, right? But you start to realize, and there was this, you just had this, well, if we create this environment

where I can manipulate this easily, right? Then, then, okay, what's the limiting principle on that? Yeah, it's really hard to find one and just as most Stark example of this has come out to me since the book's been written. I received a phone call from Someone that I was very mean to in the book who is a extreme and in this person's case I wasn't that mean to him because the real villains of the book are people who know better and go along with the evil stuff This is the person who I think just has a radical ideology that I just disagree with. Yeah. And, and, and, and they called me and I was kind of writing about how I got basically sucked

up and, and now I was being used by them. I don't, I don't, I like to, you, you know, to quote in there for the harder they fall, but, you know, you can deal and feel without becoming the thing you touched. Right. Yeah. I thought that I could deal in their filth without becoming the thing I touched. That was, that was. That was those incorrect. But the most illuminating thing about this, but how there's no limiting principle is that the people I thought were fills, they called me out to the book and said, you know, one thing you missed is that going in the election conspiracy stuff, we were responsible about that. Like, you

know, like we didn't we didn't we didn't dabble in this whole like, Oh whole Italian satellite, create all the crazy stuff. But he's like, man, we just got out flanked. He's like, now you got all these news, like it's like newsmax and all these outlets are people are outfuckin'. So the people that 10 years ago, or however long I was eight

years ago, I was looking at him saying, oh boy, they're going over the line. They're using at least in tactics. I'm using to Nasserius ends. Now they're saying that to me about even crazier people. So where does that end? You know, where's the end point of that? I think that's when I was very scary.

It's funny because I mentioned the heart of the fall when you and I connected and I reread the book like maybe six months ago. And like I remember, and this goes to the point about you have this awakening. I remember in my mind, I remember, and this goes to the point about you have this awakening, I remember, in my mind, I read the book, I'm in public relations, and shortly thereafter, that's when I leave public relations, like that, that it was influential in me taking the step, because

and this is the last page, which I, which I highlighted, I'll read it, because I do very much recommend it. He said, what does he say? Enough brains to see it, and not enough guts to stand up to it. Thousands of us, millions of us, corrupted, ruthless career-ridden, good hearts in the yellow bellies, living out our lives for the easy buck, the soft birth, indulging ourselves in the illusion that we can deal in, felt without becoming the thing we touch. And so I, like, I know I read this, I know it struck me, I wrote about it later that it influenced me. But I was like, so when was that? And so the like I know I read this I know it struck me I wrote about it later that it influenced me

But I was like so when was that and so the book came out in 2012 I wrote in 2011 So I was like, you know, okay, I must have read this in like 2010 Maybe and I like I pull up my Amazon account and I search when I bought this book It was like 2007 or something, right? Like four or five years, I was aware of the idea that would eventually sort of tip me over, but I found a way to rationalize it or not deal with it or my self-interest got between me and doing what I was sensing was right.

So that's the other thing is like people think like a win was the moment for you that it changed and that's not how it works You talk about in the book you had you saw yourself drawing a red line I think was Scott crew it or something and then as you went back through your emails You're like no, no, I danced on that line for like 10 months. Yeah. Yeah No, that's hilarious. You say that because I couldn't even, I believed that when I went back and looked at it, like this sort of book's going to be humbling, right? And like reflection and looking back at your diaries and what you've written can be humbling.

And yeah, in my head, I was like, well, for me, the 2016 election was this, I felt like there were two red lines. For me, the 2016 red line was my political red line. I was like, I can't go along with stuff in politics. I can't go along with this filth I'm being made dirty. Okay. That was my political redline. But even then I acknowledged I was like, well, my, my really career redline didn't come till 2018. Right, two years after that one, because I was still doing the same tactics. I was doing in politics just for corporate interests. Right? Yeah. You know, this was this inertia suck, you know, brought me in. I didn't translate that over.

So that was one part where it was like two, two and a half, three years before I was like, wait a minute, no. This corrupting stuff that got me feeling bad about politics, that's the same. It should make the stakes are a little lower. It's an apparel company or whatever. For your example, I had a bunch of silly examples. May the stakes are lower, but still that these stuff

matters and build on each other. And secondly, this prude example, which is he was the Trump EPA guy, and I had known him, and he'd asked me to help him as a saver. And I was like, okay, well, this is what I do. This politics, and I still have this red line over here. I'm not going to help these candidates, I don't like. But okay, it's going to need some PR advice.

And then he goes in, and he starts getting corrupted, in myriad ways. I mean, this is not just about ideology, I'd he start doing all this, just all the stuff that when you get close to power, all of the stories throughout history, like Scott Prut was all of them, ready to got corrupted financially

and just like the love of access. And so it's like scandal after scandal. And so in my head, I thought, I think it was only a couple of weeks right after he went in, I told him, like I got a, I'm sorry, I can't help you anymore. And then when I went back and looked at my emails, I was like, my last email to Scott Pruitt was like,

no, Vembra. I get new is in in January, right? So it was like 11 months. Like what I thought was just a couple of weeks. I know the world is crazy and businesses are going through all different kinds of cycles, but one thing that's always consistent is that you need the best possible people in your company. And LinkedIn Jobs is here to make it easier to find the people you want to talk to faster

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So like when people want you or are soliciting you, so it's not just like law of access, it's also like wanting to be desired. It's very hard to like take yourself out of the game, right? Like the player never says coach, you should bench me, right? So even when you have these ethical concerns, it's hard to be, it's hard. You can maybe stop actively seeking it out, but extricating yourself from it fully is harder than we'd like to admit. Yeah, I listened to your Macana Hey podcast before. Yeah. So it's like I was, I thought I'd had red lights. I was getting yellow.

I was giving myself yellow lights. Actually, um, uh, slow down rather than just stop and turn around. Yeah, there, there are two, I think elements to breaking away that are hard. One is just that, the desire for interest. I tell the story of the look of my good friend with dinner and she surprises me and says, it's just gonna go into the administration. And I say, why? And it says, why?

I just got this phone call from someone's eye. You know, I don't wanna out. But I got this phone call from a cabinet official. And what was I supposed to do? Not take the phone call? And I looked at her and I was like, yes, not take the phone call. Just don't take that phone call. Do something else.

You're talented. There are a lot of things you can do. But that, you know, you get called by a famous person or by an important person. And like there's this draw. So that's one part of it. That's hard to break away. The other part of it is, this is identity element, which is this kind of theme for me to look at.

It's like, we all have these things in our identities, right? Our race, our religion, gender, what our interests are, our work. Hey, people don't appreciate sometimes how much like your work is part of your identity and how you see yourself and how people see you, right? And so in the Republican politics or in any politics, it's both things that your party and your work, right? So then now, so now you're in this kind of club and you start to see things that you don't like. So to say no to be the person that says no,

you have to overcome a lot, but you have to overcome the fact that they want you. So I'm adding the draw of that. You have to overcome the part of your desire to kind of be in the mix, be feelin' important. You have to overcome the fact that you have these identities that are ingrained. I'm a PR man.

I'm a Republican, you know, I'm a Republican. That's how my family sees me. It's how my friends see me. And I'm going to quit that. And so part, you know, that's hard to overcome for yourself mentally, but then you start thinking of, okay, what then what am I? Right? Or what am I? What are the, what are these people going to think about me? Or like, my dog's name is Reagan. Like, do I need to change my dog's name as part of this do I need to change my dog's name as far to this identity change? You know, like, yeah,

just all these elements that make it much easier to just kind of continue in the game and continue in these groups rather than call in the red light. Well, and there's the financial element too. It's funny, and I'm sure you experienced it when you wrote the book, which I did really enjoy. Is people would say, like, you're just doing this for money. That's what people would say to me. And it was weird for me because it sounds kind of humble, Braggie, but I was like, I did get paid for the book,

but I don't think you understand. This was the worst financial decision I made in my life. You know, like, if I wanted to make money, you would not hear it. You would not know who I was, right? Like, if I wanted to continue making money, I would have continued to exist in the backdrop. I would not have revealed how I do what I do. I would not have pissed off most of the people in my industry, and I certainly wouldn't have torched clients

in the way that I did. I wrote this because there was something else that was motivating me. And yet, it also did cost me, it did cost me money, and it's hard to walk away from money too. That's probably the hardest. Yeah, and for people who had older kids and stuff,

if I could, young, I remember this a lot with my friends who are maybe a little older than me or had started a family earlier. Yeah. They're like, man, I've got a 14 year old to 12 year old. They're going to college in a few years. I don't like what's happening with the party. I don't like what's happening with politics.

I feel gross sometimes. I have to cut some of these ads that I know are lies or exaggerations or, but, you know, what do you want me to do? Now, I'd proceed to make a few suggestions. Usually, it rebuffed, right? Because it's hard to get all those other identity items are hard to break away from. And then the risk, the unknown, trying to take another job. But no, I know you'll be the financial upside.

And I don't, you know, now we're going to start sounding like Alan Dershwood's complaining about how he's not, you know, getting invited to the library on Martha's Vineyard or whatever, so I get it. I'm pretty much, I'm doing just fine, right? But the upside, financially, to the people that stayed. And I couldn't be happy with my decision. I'm happy when I ever been. And I think everybody should do it, I did,

and try to do something that they feel good about and so still buy. Some of my old friends aren't as happy, but they're not as happy on their boat. And that's another choice, right? That's another element of all this. But the financial part of staying is always going to be greater, because in any industry, if you're quitting, you're starting from square one. Even if you have a nice landing page of a book, and it's like, okay, well, what am I right or now? Like, what else am I, you know, what else am I gonna do?

Right? The easy path is always to stay in the cartel. Yeah, I remember there's a line in billions. She goes, you wanna know what happened to so-and-so? Like, somebody about it, she's like, oh, she has a fucking blog now. You know, like, it's the lowest, like, the status, is not just the finance, but it's the status of where you rank in the thing. And people don't want to go from an insider to

an outsider. That's a hard thing to do. And sometimes I think this is the other part. Sometimes you can get yourself so deep in it that you actually can't get out of it, right? Like, I remember I read there's a great book by James Rom called Dying Every Day, which is about Seneca, the Stoke philosopher, but Seneca worked for Nero. That Seneca was the political advisor to Nero, which people don't know, and it's easy to not want to think about, because it's so unpleasant, but there becomes this time where later in Nero service, as Nero starts to go insane, Seneca begins by being his tutor when he's like a teenager. So he's like the political advisor to him. And he thinks like you talk about in the book, he's the Messiah that's keeping him in check,

right? He would be worse if someone else did it. Finally, he realizes Nero's irredeemable he has to leave. And he goes to Nero and he says, look, I'll give you all the money back. Like, I'm out. And Nero goes, no, doesn't work like that. You know, Nero's like, you know, and sometimes, you know, you can get yourself so tied up in a situation or so complicit in something that unwinding is not as simple as just having

that epiphany. So I mean, obviously here, the best remedy is like not getting yourself, but it being aware as you're going into things, right? Because there is a moment where sometimes it's too late. That's a good, the Seneca analogy is much better than the one I used in the book because you know, it has the depth of history and time and wisdom of Stoics. I use the squid game analogy, right? I mean, you're in game five of the squid time and wisdom of stonecs. I use the squid game analogy. But right, I mean, you're in game five of the squid game.

And it's like, okay, well, I guess I've got a shift. I've already sacrificed this much. Yeah. And so for this, this is the people who know better, right? And that's the book that's to the book is about, right? It's the people who are dealing with these moral conflicts, right? You know, there'd be some people in any industry that are sociopathic or like that part of it. Sure. But for the people that are dealing with this moral conflict, right? You know, there'd be some people in any industry that are sociopathic or like like that part of it. But for the people that are dealing with this moral conflict,

right? You know, maybe they don't get so deep ascentica where the emperor is threatening their life if they bail, but you do get deep enough where it's like, well, what's one more moral sacrifice at this point? Right? So it's the January 6th element, right? That you think you would think, right? And we see this on January 6th, is that, and this isn't any other books, but I try to get into the psychology of it, the Capitol storms, the people, they don't like that.

Right, whatever their views are of Donald Trump, right? Like the Republicans in the Senate, don't are scared, they're scared for the lives. Like it's, right? Like the Republicans in the Senate don't are scared. They're scared for the lives. Like it's dangerous. They have the Capitol Police that protect them or being injured. They have this, I know that some people outside of DC

don't believe this, but they do maintain this kind of respect for the history of the institution that's being degraded. So if you have all these sort of emotional feelings tied up in it. And then you see some of these guys publicly and some of the other books that have been written privately say in that like week after January 6th, okay, this is the last, well, this is the last step for me. This I can't go any further in this like we've gone too far. But to a person they all came back come back in. Not made out to a person that's handful.

There's a small handful. You can have on one on one hand who did foybale there. Why? Like why did they go all the go back in? That's because they were too deep. Like they had already made all these sacrifices in the first place and it turned out that what happened in their sex is what the people that had gotten them there wanted.

Right, and so now to bail on it then is even, is even harder to defend. Yeah, there's the opposite. It's over in the room then for me. I at least got a clean slate back in 2015 or 2016 whenever it was, right? Like now they're they're already um, spoiled by having been involved in this. And so nobody's gonna give them any credit for bailing. And and also there's no, there's no place for them to go, right? And so slowly but surely, you know, you've seen these stories of Lindsey Graham's, etc. They all come McCarthy's,

they all just come right back, you know, to the same rationalizations that they used to get us into January 6th. Well, so to go back to that scene where you're having dinner with your friend and they're like, I got the call. I wonder what should I do? So I got that call in the fall of 20, I guess the winter of 2016 after the election, I've not been a supporter. I'd been sort of very clear about what I thought about certain things. Then I'm sort of, I wrote a New York Times piece about this later, but I got this kind of specifically connecting it to Seneca and Nero, but I got this sort of surprise call from someone I didn't know, I guess it started with an email, but they wanted me to be

Devos's press secretary. I've not worked in politics, only worked in PR, probably every normal person had already turned the job down, but all of a sudden I got this offer and obviously, I'm someone who believes, I'm someone I like politics, I like America, like the idea to be of service is interesting to me. And it was even though my political alignment with the Voss is like, they're two separate circles. My political alignment Trump, two separate circles as far as overlap goes. And yet I surprised myself by how interested I was in it in the sense that it was again flattering to be asked, right, like to be sought after.

And how different do you think my life would have been had I said yes to this? What do you think would happen? Well, it wouldn't have been great. I can tell you, my friend was a very top advisor to the device, took this call, accepted. We had the same situation. Another in politics, that person is in politics. So it's different animals. It did have the same views as us on the president, but had known to Voss a little bit than various early career stuff. And you know, gets this call. And I'm telling you, that person is very unhappy with their life choices and has now has now completely bailed on

on their career. And it's and good for them actually starting something new that's more fulfilling that is just totally separate. I don't know. I'm drinking with them in about two months actually when I swing by Florida for a work thing. So I don't exactly even know. It's literally like importing X-Forting, whatever art, you know, art vandal, I was doing it. I got it out. It's not like they're doing something completely different. So no, I think that your life would have been worse.

And like very, very unfathomable. And you've gotten there. And that you would have been caught up in kind of the excitement of it. At first, right? And this is the other thing. I get with politics. The Chris Christie, there's this story of the Chris Christie tells in the book where he says, you know, you leave the governor's mansion and it's like the lights turn off and the music stops. Right. And there's no, and there's no replacing it. And obviously for a governor, that is a lot of things.

It's security detail, it's media, spotlight, it's all that. So it's different for a press secretary. But the principle is the same, right? You have reporters calling you. You're wanted, you're desired. You get to go with the secretary places. You get to maybe ride on Air Force One

from time to time, right? Like there are all these little things that make it appealing. And pulling yourself away from it becomes harder and harder. And then when you leave, sometimes you feel like you've got to replace that, but it's with something else. Interesting. Yeah, I remember thinking, this is a way I kind of sometimes

make decisions is I go, okay, I'm reflecting forward on my life. And I'm like, why am I divorced? And I don't see my kids, right? Like what, like, and then I'm going back. Like what are the decisions I made that like created that chain of events? Like you know when you, when you watch intervention

or something and it's like, then this is the moment when the music shifts, the person's life spiraled out of control. And I was just like, I like my life, I like what I do, I don't like any of these people. Why would I accept this thing, right? And like, what is the part of me that's feeling like I should toss all of that aside

and go for it, that is not a good urge. That is the corruption of power and ego right there. And I feel it fizzled out and I didn't pursue. There was never a moment where they were like, the job is yours. Do you want to start Monday? And I had my Jerry McGuire moment or something. There was nothing like that. But it was this thing where it's like, it can be very easy to have these sort of clean and clear moral judgments about what one should do or shouldn't do. And then it's tempting. Yeah.

And in some ways, you're your example is a little less tempting than some other people, right? Because you liked your life. You didn't like these people. I tell the same thing. And I'm talking about a Lyssa Fera, right? Who, you know, she, in her situation, she does like, you know, she likes her job. She has friends in her old mentor,

goes and takes a job inside the White House, offers it to her. So now it's like, oh man, we're getting the band back together. I'm going to get to work for my mentor. My friends are in this job. I'm going to now have a title that I can maybe use as a launching pad for a different career when it's over. I need it. They want me, they not only do they want me, but I'm needed, because if it's not me, it might be somebody else that's as good as me, right? So, in a lot of ways, that tempting phone call that you got, just the fact that you can even relate to the allure,

yeah, shows you how much more alluring it would have been if you were in a different environment like some of these folks, and then I go and meet with obviously things don't turn out great for Alyssa. She leaves the little lighthouse on terrible terms, she's now being, you can just search her Twitter feed, she's being trolled by people on all sides, right, because you get in so deep. And I'm talking to her and it's just like, I, you know, I should have known, right? Like her, you know, she's like, my body was telling me I knew I had a panic

attack before I took the job. Like, you know, all the signs were there, but there were all these alluring elements of it. It is, it is, I could give me an empathy for, you know, to do those sorts of interviews, like not, not excuse myself, but understanding of how people can go along with stuff they know is going to be against their integrity. I have the most empathy in that space, one for really young people who don't know any better, right?

I think about like I worked for many years in American apparel and that's where I sort of cut my teeth and learned a lot of stuff. And I think about like, I didn't seek out that position, that position was sought out. Like I was sought for that position and why was that? It's because I was young and talented but naive, right? Like groomed now has a loaded, is now a loaded word. But that is the idea. People in power who want people to do things for them, look for a type of person and they

tempt a person with a very proven playbook. So I have sympathy for young people at the beginning of their career because they haven't seen stuff like this before. And then I also have sympathy for the military folks who have a certain, a different sense of duty and responsibility, the idea that you go where you're sent or where you're asked to go, not where you want to go. I feel like those are two extremes I make more space for. Yeah, I don't include a military folks in here

because we need someone to make each other new button isn't pressed. Yes, but everyone does have, you know, you can't excuse everybody, right? And even like, look, that's just like it's gray and everything, Mark Millley, for example, has just done something, it's done a phenomenal job as Jeremy and Joint Chiefs in an impossible situation, right?

I guess trying to navigate all this competing interests. But and still, he was there walking in Lafayette Square, when like, like, tear gas grenades were being launched into a peaceful protest. And it was like, well, you were still there were still times where you have to balance these choices. So, the young people thing is, is super interesting. And this is there in Washington, a very big, a lord, just like PR outside of Washington.

But if the young person was game, right? Like if you look at congressional staff, you know, staff in a lot of these, it's really, it's usually one or two gray beards and then a lot of 20 somethings, right? Like on, on, in these political offices, you get shocked. Kind of have a few of the outside of Washington to go back. These are the people that they can do. Yeah. But you know, looking at that Cassidy Hutchison,

I this was the most proud example to have in recent light. It's like you're a young woman. You know, you get put in this place of responsibility. You're in the White House. You do it for good reasons, for earnest reasons. You know, you'd grown up, you're Republican, and all of a sudden all this crazy stuff is happening around you. And your boss is asking you to do favors, and they're like, oh, we're going to go to the

Capitol to try and steal the, and you're like, what is happening? And like people are, you know, coming in and out, and you're like, I don't think this doesn't feel right, but I don't know. I'm 24, 24, right? And I've never been in a lighthouse before. Maybe it's always chaotic, right? I do totally understand that. I just think that that is, like her testimony was a prime example of how, how the young, somebody that, that young, if they don't get sucked up by these negative rationalizations, can have a clarity that a lot

of the older people did it because she hadn't been beaten down by like just accepting this element of the game. And that's like that big part of why I went right out the game and how it kind of led to where we are because you rationalize stuff. And like, oh, you become a grizzled, that cynic. Yeah. You're like, I'm 38. I'm 42.

I'm like, yeah, you haven't seen nothing. We've been doing this for 20 years, right? And so it's, so it's, so you become, it's got these are, you become more corruptible. for 20 years, right? And so you become easier, you become more corruptible. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting.

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on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon music or Wondery app. Yeah, like it's like if you haven't had that many bosses before and you admire your boss or you admire the office or the place that your boss holds, whether it's politics or business, you know, whether you work for Elon Musk or Harvey Weinstein or whatever, you don't know how profoundly not normal it is for your boss to throw their plates or to scream at someone or to, you don't have anything to compare it to. So you're able to rationalize it easier because it, and actually I've found out as I've exited, it's been this kind of deprogramming thing where I'm like, oh yeah, this isn't what healthy, like I picked up habits or I saw what a perverted kind of leadership in

both senses of the word. But it's like, I remember my wife would be like, yeah, you can't call someone at two in the morning unless like there's a literal fire. And I'm like, but I had an idea I wanted to run by someone. You know what I mean? Like, because that's what someone did to me and that was normalized around me and learning like, I think I did.

I get this from my husband as well all the time. No, that's not cool. And I was like, really? Are you sure? I was like, I'm like way dialed back from what my boss has used to do. It's like, no, no, still not cool off. Okay, good to know.

Yeah, and you realize that they hired you precisely because an adjusted experienced, like confident adult would have been like, would have answered the phone, dealt with a thing and then said, hey, don't ever call me at two in the morning. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? You don't treat me like this.

Yeah, exactly. But so you don't realize call me at two in the morning. You know what I mean? You don't treat me like this. Yeah, exactly. But so you don't realize how you are, even the people who are complicit in what's happening and a lot of these people are complicit. They are themselves victims of that same thing, whether they know it or not. No doubt. Well, the last person in the book is like,

the character I kind of framed the book around is my good friend Who I know is a person with a good heart. I saw it up close in a lot of instances And yeah, and we have this little bit of a falling out and she gets kind of sucked up in this world And I have this break. I said no, I'm out like I'm gonna write and you know, I need to move to California and do yoga. Yeah. I start to like, deep program myself as you said and then she gives deeper and deeper in. So it was really long exchange,

where I'm trying to understand how she gets sucked in so deep. And I almost felt like I broke through to her at the very end when I say, actually, excuse me, she becomes a loyal supporter of the former president and she's there at the mall in January 6, kind of helping to organize not any leadership way, like open up the chairs and managing the VIPs and stuff. She put on YMCA and yeah, she put on a glory backstage and like, you know, all the family was dancing and And I said look in some ways you're near a victim and some ways you're complicit and some ways you're victim and the people That were there that day who's now lives have been ruined the people who are who handful people died

Some who have been imprisoned some of his families life have been been broken up because, you know, you've seen these stories We're dying. What? Yeah, we're dying. Yeah, all these people are victims of him because he is a child and he advanced this lie That is not true like no matter what you like about Trump or what you think he did well And like he advanced this lie that he won when he lost because he's a man-child and because he wants power. And he was so adept at advancing and manipulating to use your board and look that he manipulated millions of people into going along with it. And so, and fortunately, you're one of them.

I gotta get more. I can't believe you were a victim of Bernie made off. However hard that is for you to feel, you're one of them. I gotta get out. You're a victim of Bernie made off. However hard that is for you to feel, you were snookered. I don't know how to tell you anything other than that fact. Yeah, and so that, and that, thinking about it in that sense, kind of puts signs of different light

about all the around, all these people that around them. And I'm trying to write something that says, there's this value in all of us, going back to original original teal quote, you know, stopping and staying. No, like is this right? Is this right? And eventually if you get too deep in it, you're not the type of person, this need to become not the type of person to say that. You can not the type of person to question it because that's the sign you don't get it. You get pushed to the outside. You don't get promoted. Right? And so you end up just going along and then saying it does seem a little weird. I mean, I don't know why this election would have been stolen. No other elections would have been stolen. But once you start saying that in meetings, I talked to another guy, just another guy who's at the RNC during this time.

And he said, you know, I would say I would raise my hand in a meeting and say, I don't know if we should put out this tweet. I don't think that this is true. Right. I don't think this is true. And he said, we didn't put out that tweet. I said, he said that was a win. Then the next time, I said, I don't know if we should put out this tweet. And they put out the tweet anyway. And then the next time, I said, I don't think we should put out this tweet. And I go back to my office and I get a call from my house. And they're like, hey, are you on board with the team here? Right? Are you on board with the mission? And that's when you know, you can speak out once or twice, but eventually you become the troublemaker. And then you get pushed out of the circle.

And so there's a lot of incentives to not do it. Well, and to go to our point about you, you exist in this little world. So you tell yourself, I'm not like the other people in the room. I'm the one raising my hand, right, which is true. You are the tallest midget, right? I'm not an offensive term. I know I'm not supposed to use, but you you are better than them, but you all are still woefully short, right? And so it's kind of that junior Messiah thing you talked about, which I felt like it's when I was at American Apparel also, which is like, I was like, obviously he's spinning off the planet. Obviously,

he's doing things that are not okay. Why am I here? I was like, well, I have a little bit of power in the company and I can protect this team of people. And that's my job. And if I left, they would be more vulnerable. But, you know, that, and that is, that ironically, the idea of that everyone's a victim, they're, they are inherently exploiting that good impulse in you also. They know they've got you so twisted and tied up and amashed, which would be like the psychological term, they've got you amashed in their toxic family that you won't leave because you've made up a reason.

They don't really care what the reason is. If you're a true believer or you're a junior Messiah, all they care is that they have, they can continue to use you. And sometimes those are the legitimate. Yeah. Alissa, who was a junior Messiah, was right. She did save stars and stripes. The work times where she was the one sane person who made stuff happen that the country

would have been worse off, right? So that helped you to justify it. There were, I have friends who run consulting companies that say, well, I didn't ever work for any of the people that I consider over the line. I worked for different people that were part of that same team. I've got a big staff that works for me. And so what was I supposed to do, Tim?

I'm supposed to just pick all these clients and then all these 20 somethings are gonna lose their jobs. That's legitimate, right? And so then the bad actors, the toxic actors, the manipulators know that they have that leverage over them, right? So then, you know, you say suck them in a little further.

They say, okay, we have to take on this one client, right? Because if you don't, then I'm gonna take away these other eight, right? And so, you become made dirty again. Yeah, it's been weird. My stoicism books have been, has sort of made their way, primarily through Republican circles.

So all the people I know in politics are all Republicans. Really? And I've gotten, I've gone to Washington, I'm not saying this. What I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I think there is something about, to go to the point, I think the earnestness, believing in ideals, believing in these sort of notions of patriotism and whatever, I think that's kind of what gets exploited by some of these bad actors. But what I kept finding too to go to our point of like, I stopped this from happening, I stopped this. I would talk to people and it was amazing.

They were all, like they all didn't like what was happening, but they believed they were not yet powerful enough to do something about it, right? It was like, it was the level above them's responsibility, and then those people thought it was the level above their responsibilities. So that's what is kind of tragic,

but also inspiring about some of these young people that you're talking about that have testified where they're like, no, no, it's me, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna be the one that does it, even though there's people who are way higher paid, way more secure that should be doing it, and they won't do it. Yeah, and you get in this little culture, like you said, in this little box, where it's easy to say that, because you might be the best actor in your little box. I'm sure all friends who are listening to this, who are, I've had a lot of friends,

cautiously messaging me about the book, are you judging me? Am I the first one in the book? Are you judging me? You have to do it's right for you. If you're asking, then yes. You're asking, then yes. And there are some people that it's true. They're like, well, the candidates that I work for are generally good. And it's like, well, do you want to go down this road? Do you want me to start saying, well, do you want me to review every ad that you've made for that candidate? Like, is that is every ad within your integrity? Well, no, but I had to run this one because X, Y and Z, right? And so it becomes easy to rationalize this if you're not, if you're not questioning the whole enterprise. Yes.

You know, if you're, if you're, if the, if the starting point at the ante point is, well, I need to be in this game somehow. Yeah. Right. Then it becomes very easy to rationalize, even if because you're the very, you might be the very best actor in that situation. Right. I've got like the people who still talk to me are all really good actors, right?

Because the people who are the worst actors who have no moral code, right? I guess the two people who like you still talk to me. Yeah, yeah. You hear from people they're like, I loved your book and they're like, you shouldn't have loved my book all about how you suck. But like, you know, there's like this weirdness, like there, you almost are able to relate with the truly amoral nihilist better because it's all out in the open and there's no pretense.

And yeah, but it there's also kind of a touch. Like there's some people, I remember there's a person, you mentioned in the book, and I'll tell you the name, I'll point, but they, one of my books came out, and they showed up at a book signing that I did, and just kind of let me know they were there, you know? And it was like very much like I'm watching you kind of, it was like a weird, there's also, I think they are kind of like,

keep your enemies close kind of a thing. There's an element of intimidation to it too. Yeah, and well, if you don't have a moral code that you're abiding by, and if you've decided that nihilism is your path, then you don't feel judged by these books. That's true, right? You know what I mean, right?

And so it's not, so it You know what I mean? Right. And so it's not. So it really is like on this continuum of people making choices, like the ones who are the most, you know, the ones who are closest to, to my view and who are like teetering on the edge of like whether they are complicit or not, they'll read it because they're like kind of moving back fourth day to day, depending on what the latest thing that happened to them, what their compartmentalizing, you know, what their financial situation is, or the people that don't. They feel further along on that continuum or just screw that guy.

But the overlap with some of the characters in our books did make me feel gross. We don't have to name them, but I was laughing because I wrote this down. I was literally on page six. We used the same exact William Churchill quote. So I was like, yeah, the same analogy about the alligator. And then on page 17 you reference a scandal as just sort of like this is one of those stupid political scandals that got created out of the air because of our corrupt media system and I was like, all right, I was behind that one.

Like you know, I'm page 17. Is that the one? No, the Herman canoes. You mentioned Herman canoes. Yes, the Herman cano is you mentioned Herman cano. Yes, yes, the the Herman cane political thing. Yeah, that was us, which we did for no reason, like just to just to just as a random sh-shank. Yeah. And and I'm reading this. I was like boy, I'm feeling very seen right now.

Like he's going through like the corruptible atmosphere and like I'm only on page 17 of the book and he's already unknowingly like I did something that I was behind, but that is like this overlap in, you know, these worlds. I just, I think it also is like why this is so, an expiable kind of. You're at least tried to offer solutions at the end of your book. I don't even try. My publisher's like, you usually need folks to have a chapter like the last one at the end of the end of Ryan's book where you're like, you make some ideas. I was like, this isn't going to be one of those books. It's not what I'm here. to make some ideas? I was like, this isn't going to be one of those books. I know it's not what I'm here.

I want people to get the lessons throughout, but I'm not, I don't think this is fixable for the reason that you mentioned in your last chapter, which is just there is this incestuous, hard to break cycle between the media and the ideological media, which is a little bit different, right, and then the PR world and then the political strategist world.

And so even though we were kind of on opposite sides of that whole system, there's overlaps. And I think that just shows how kind of interconnected all that is. And when you say, like, really the only way to fix it is to say, I'm not going to be part of the system anymore. Well, you mentioned that at the end of the book. You're like, my publisher had this conversation with me about it. And I was like, Oh, I know that conversation.

I know that exact conversation. Yeah, there's a, there's a, so is you knits in quote, he says something like, uh, let evil enter the world, but say not through me. Right. And I think that, that is unfortunately a pretty dire world view. Like, right? Like, because ideally you could do something about it, you could influence it. But like, we may be at a point where like, the primary remedy is like, I'm out. Right? And that takes courage. It takes a sense of right and wrong. It takes discipline. You know, it takes a lot out of a person.

We're asking a lot from people to do that, but I'm not sure what else. Where are the lines? It's hard. It's hard. I've had the benefit, I think in my view, is the red line in my work became very clear to me. It took me a little too long, as we said,

but it became very clear. The lines become kind of blurry, right? You know, you're doing other, like one of the things that I talk about in right, you know, if people have made it this long and are more familiar with the right to the conservative side of the aisle, then I'll give you a little gift here because it's like a lot of the things that I write about in the conservative media and that I think that led to a lot of these immoral actions are not that different in the conservative media. And that I think that led to a lot of these immoral actions are not that different in the last media, right?

Like there's some differences and you can draw a little line here and there. But yeah, so what I'm getting invited to do interviews on some of these outlets and it's like, well, I know what they're gonna ask me, right? Cause it's a lefty outlet. So they want me to talk about how Republicans are awful. And I do think that Republicans are awful. And I do

think that Republicans are awful out of lately, in particular, but I don't think that doesn't mean that Democrats are perfect. It doesn't mean that Republicans are iridimably evil, right? Like, I'm not brought on these to interviews to offer that nuance, right? And I know that going in. So then I started to think, man, am I still a complicit in this system, right? Like the one that I didn't like before, and it's something that I'm still kind of grappling with, and trying to deal with how to, you know, I make myself feel a little better

from time to time that I sort of volunteering or random critique that I know they don't want to hear. But is that really, is that just a comforting lie I'm telling myself that I'm still in the system? You know, that's something I'm still grappling with. Well, I think about that because it's like, hey, guys, 11 years ago, I wrote a book that explained exactly how this playbook would work, like how the Miloia and Oplis playbook

would work, how the Trump playbook would work, work how the ban and playbook would work, how the Russian disinformation thing would work. And I wrote about it, and I wrote about it specifically aimed at showing the media how they are vulnerable to these things. And I go, and you know what you said? You said I was an asshole that like I was a bad person, right? You've had all this information for a very long time. What did you do?

You gave Trump a billion and a half dollars with the free publicity in 2016, right? Like you did this, right? So the hard part is there's kind of this, at this point, there's kind of this pox on both of their houses mentality, which is similar, but not the same as the fuck it, you know, nothing matters. It's just like, you know, just because one side of things is acting evil and is corrupt and been compromised, it doesn't mean that the other people are good. They may just be slightly behind on a similar evolution and there is a lot of blood on their

hands too. Yeah. And so when then, okay, it's right, how do you break it up? You can say, well, I'm going to do what Rod Drawer did and do the Benedict option and move to, you know, move to the woods. And that's not a move on. And I'm gonna end up supporting Hungarian defenders. Yeah, I'm gonna be a victor orban all of a sudden, right?

So there's no, you can't just remove yourself from society, especially the types of, we just met, but types of type day, and people sociable personalities. Like I'm not gonna remove, I'm not gonna become a shepherd. And so the best answer that I came to in the book is, well, you have to just look at yourself and have awareness and decide and intention and say, what I'm doing right now with my integrity is what I'm doing right now.

Am I doing some triple bank shot that's providing cover for something that is outside my target that I think is immoral. And that requires constant maintenance. And it's not a systemic fix. That's about individual choice. And the systemic part of it, I just don't know. I don't have good answers to. And I just, I'm sorry to say, I read your book and I think that there are of all, I don't know how many chapters there were, but of all the things that you lay out as we're problematic, maybe two of them have gotten slightly better. And all we've got one or four of them have gotten way worse, right? Like they've been, you know, the advertising versus subscription model has gotten slightly better since you were originally at the book.

I, all the other elements have gotten worse. And if you look at TikTok, like all the things you've complained about the blogosphere, it's like, look at TikTok, social media, or Instagram, or any, and they're all just on steroids, right? So the systemic part of this is just, I was like, that's why I can't write a final chapter about this, right? Instead, I want this book to be about people's individual, trying to be intentional about their individual choices, that the lines are not always as clear as they might see. Yeah, I think about like sometimes it's hard

to take that hat off for that pair of sunglasses that you know how to look through the world through. And I just go like, man, if I like really wanted to get people angry about something that did not exist, like getting on the lips of TikTok would be the easiest fucking thing in the world. Do you know what I mean? And like, and I think about that did not exist, like getting on lips of TikTok would be the easiest fucking thing in the world. Do you know what I mean? And like, and I think about that

and go, Oh, I should do that. I go, people are definitely doing that, right? And, and that's not great. And when you think about just these gaping vulnerabilities in the system and then you wonder why we are where we are, it's those things are related. I guess you got to get to a place like you're saying, where I think some good questions are like, who am I carrying, water for? You know, as far to my job, you're point about like,

who am I providing cover for as a good way to think about it? Also like, does my work make the world a better, or a worse place? You know, like I read some, and you're point about all sides of the media, guilty of this, there was a really good resignation letter, I think last year of some, some person who had an MSNBC contract, and she was just like, I'm out, you know, this sucks.

And it takes courage to do that. But like, when you ask yourself those questions, it becomes clear and clear that that's what you have to do. Yeah, I don't, I mean, I think that especially in this world, in the media and politics worlds, right? It is always going to maintain, it is always going to continue to be a, like, at some level, the ratings matter, like, winning and losing elections matter. I, this, here's a great question.

We're, we're grappling this, there's this big discussion right now in the media about Democrats are trying to help the crazier Republicans win primaries. This is a prime example. Is there, is there a clear moral answer to this? Right? Because on the one hand, the Democrats are in a competition and they see that by helping a crazier candidate that might make them win better. And if they, as they win, then they can institute these policies that they think will help people more. Okay? That's their rationalization.

Like to me, it feels a little yucky, right? It feels a little gross. It's like really though, like, or aren't we playing with fire here a little bit? Then on the other hand, you have these Republicans who are running cover for the insane people who are out there getting on their moral soapbox and saying, well, it's the definitely, now they're getting a bunch of clicks for you to see these Fox News articles and these segments and these tweets or people get all these clicks and well, it's the Democrats who are acting immorally here. And it's just kind of this at least is one of the situations in the way she feel like

I really do need to become a shepherd like I like how do you like within this system how is there a way to act with with integrity? And I just I just don't have a great answer to that question. I like the best answer for me personally is, well, when this topic comes up and I'm on MSNBC and I know they want me to say one thing or I'm on a conservative thing and they want to set it up the thing,

I kind of just tell them what I really think, which is like actually this is a moral gray area. And I'm curious what here's the arguments against it. But I don't know, is that helping? Maybe that isn't the right answer. This is where all this, you know, it becomes very easy to just be like, epochs on all your houses. I won't believe that that's not helpful. Yeah, it's like the less problem is that it hasn't been pragmatic and strategic and Machiavellian enough in some ways, right? Like it is not as skilled as it needs to be in wielding the levers of power, both in

the media and in politics. And yet, you don't want to become like the people that, you know, or you create an arms race. And that you're right. That is a very tricky moral dilemma that you would like to know that our best people are on it, but I'm not sure we're setting our hopes. We're not setting our best. I promise. They're standing back and standing by.

Yeah. Oh, God. But these are even, these are even illusions that it's possible to make or not. But I love the book. I think it's really important. And I would think I lost the cover after I was reading it. But I took a bunch of notes. I very much enjoyed it.

And I think it was very pretty. It is. It's a very well done cover. I have to say, I think that it trusts me online, cover a little more dramatic and exciting, but you also have a good cover, okay? But I will not hear any slander of Michael B. Root who did my cover, who's awesome. So I was really grateful to him.

And I was like, do not, I call it, it's my friend's father. I was like, do not give me one of these fucking political book covers. And here I have Terry McCollum's book, send it, sit right here. I let Terry McCollum's the fine person, so I don't mean to pick on them, but look at this. Oh, it's so hard.

You know, oh, I was like, do not give me a red, white, and blue cover. Okay, like give me something a little different. So yours is also good. We don't need to have a cup. Not everything is part of the competition. No, I know, but I love the book. And I actually, and where I wanted this conversation to go at the beginning, especially was it's very relevant and I think important, even if you, out, totally outside

of politics, because this could be someone working in the mortgage industry. It could be someone who is a drone operator and they're not questioning whether, you know, it could lose in the oil industry. It doesn't matter what you're in. We all find ourselves slowly corrupted, or can find ourselves slowly corrupted by the incentives and the ethos of the field that we're in. And that is, you should study people or learn from people who had those wake up calls.

Even if you don't make the same decisions, you've got to be cognizant of when that might be necessary in your case. But thank you so much. I've tried, I worked really hard to do to do a couple things with the book one, be totally honest about myself, with myself. Number two, make it entertaining. So it's not homework for people who are in need. And number three, I try to make it applicable to people who are not, you know, like it's obviously about insider politics, right? But even if you don't care, if you need to, if you're not a political junkie, I tried to make it applicable to those folks who might get some value out of it outside of it.

So I think it's really awesome that you've felt that way. But now you succeeded on all three counts for sure. And I really enjoy this conversation. Thanks, man. I hope to see you when I get down to add all three counts for sure, and I really enjoy this conversation. Thanks, man. I hope to see you when I get down to Austin in September. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoke Podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Check it out at dailystoke.com slash email.

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