The Dispatch Podcast - Goodbye Red Brick Road

Episode Date: July 6, 2022

Tim Miller, writer-at-large at The Bulwark, joins Steve to talk about his new book: Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell. Miller gives listeners a breakdown of the Washington, D.C. political culture and how it’s not what you might think. Plus: the book sparks a lively debate about the divides within the Republican Party, and whether there’s a way forward in the midst of the murk. Is there a place for center-right journalism to thrive?   Show Notes: -Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Steve Hayes, joined today by Tim Miller, writer at large for The Bullwork, an author of a new book, Why We Did It, a travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell out last week. Tim and I have a revealing, spirited conversation about his work in Republican politics, conservative media, and motivated Republicans to get behind Donald Trump. I hope you'll stick around. Tim Miller, welcome to the dispatch podcast, happy to have you. It is my honor to be on the dispatch podcast, a long-term dream of mine, actually. Yeah, a long-time dream. I bet. You know, you've been hitting me with texts and emails pleading to be on the dispatch podcast. No, that's not true. None of that. I'm really excited to have you. This was a very fun listen. I did not read it. I listened to it because I've been doing a lot of driving. Very fun listen. Tons of information, stories that you and I have talked about before, stories that are parallels with my own life in some cases. And I'm very excited to have you on to walk us through it. Let me before we jump into the book itself, ask a couple of big picture questions related to your experience in politics. How did you first get interested in politics? Sounds like you were interested in politics from a very young age. And when you got

interested in politics, why were you interested in Republican politics? Yeah, good question. I got in very young. I was super interested in politics. My parents weren't. My grandmother was a big Republican and actually was most interested in politics. Firstly, when I had a bet with her that Bill Clinton was going to beat George H.W. Bush. I don't know. Something about my middle school self was just convinced. I sensed it in Bill Clinton's, you know, a man musk, I guess, that he was going to beat George H.W. Bush. So I regret that in retrospect, but it was, you know, it got me kind of addicted to the politics of politics. But after that, I was attracted to Republican politics. My first campaign I worked on was in 1998 for Bill Owens, who was running for governor of Colorado in a

primary at the time. My neighbor was a big supporter of his. I was lucky and privileged enough to not have to flip burgers in college. And he was like... And you're from Colorado. I'm from Colorado. Yeah, yeah. So he was like, I know you're into politics. I was in high school at the time.

Why don't you just intern for this guy that's like a friend of mine? I'm a supporter of his. He's running for governor. Bill wins that race in November of 98 by, you know, a hair. Late night, it was running against an incumbent lieutenant governor, Gil Shetler. You know, just the excitement of that was. I was exhilarated by the moment. I was hooked about being in campaign politics from then on.

And I went on to read Owens' mail in the governor's office. I went back to the bullhirt earlier this year and had him take me back to the mailroom. Remember my old high school days? I was like Owens' mail reader. And then Owens went to the RGA Republican Governor Association. And so I entered there and they sent me to do various governor's races. So I was hooked from the start. But what got me into Republican politics versus Democratic politics, and I talked about this in the book, I was attracted to, I remember, the 96 Dole Convention.

And I really was drawn to just this kind of patriotism of it, you know, this love of America. My father is, you know, I guess it's a cliche at this point, but it was like the ups from the bootstraps kind of guy. He became successful, did not, you know, was not a trust fund kid by any means. I got sex for his own account. And so, you know, that his life journey, I think, impacted me as a Catholic family. Everyone was very pro-life in my family. So just kind of culturally, I was more attracted to the Republicans, in addition to just being really drawn into, you know, this shining city of the hill element of republicanism, right? Like, this is a great country, you know, I want to, you know, to, the people want to come here.

I want to foster that and continue, you know, down the, what was the Bill Crystal group in the 90s, the American greatness conservatism. It was American greatness conservatism, right? This is what I was drawn to. I was always, even at that time, though, like moderate, right? I was always like pro, being pro-immigration was part of it. I was turned off, I remember being turned off by the way the Clintons treated Elion, right? In that time, right, it was the Republicans who were more welcoming to refugees and people coming through, right? So that was an element. You know, I write about in the book how, you know, I was initially, you know, pro-gun, but, you know, but very quickly kind of became squishy on that. Columbine happened while I was, um, while I was in high school,

uh, in Colorado right down the road from me. Um, I'm gay, obviously, so I was never like a massive social conservative. So, you know, I was always kind of a squishy Republican, but those were the, those were the things that, you know, that the, that American great and a shining city on the hill element to it was what really, really drew me to, to the Republican side. And that's reflected in the, the kind of Republicans you went on to work for. I would say John McCain, John Huntsman, the Republican National Committee. How did you sort of take us through your journey upward in Republican politics to the point where you became, I mean, really, you know, you and I dealt with each other on these campaigns several times. You know, you became somebody

that people had to talk to. If you were covering Republican politics, we had to know you, we had to talk to you. We didn't always want to. But, but, but, But we had to because you were good at it. How did you get to the point where you were doing that? Yeah, you once praised me and said I was good at delivering a hit with my tongue in my cheek. And at the time, I took that as a really high praise, was that I was either kind of good at that. And now, as we'll get into in the books, so now that kind of makes me cringe, looking back on that a little bit, that I was so good at that, makes me kind of, I don't know, have a little bit of shame. But look, so I got the job in, I was a campaign gypsy, right?

during the RGA stuff, as I said. I wanted to do a presidential. I went to Iowa. There was a guy named Terry Nelson, I'm sure you know, high level political consultant. He had consulted on one of my races. We got along,

and he was from Iowa. And he basically said, go to Iowa, meet the press there, and I'm going to run one of these campaigns in 2008, probably, right? And you can be my Iowa PR person.

I mean, it wasn't exactly that transactional, but that was kind of the concept, right? And time, I thought he's going to work for George Allen. at another George Allen, and Dick Watten's was George Allen's a consultant. He was Bill Owens as consultant.

So at the time, I thought maybe George Allen might be the first candidate that I worked for. And ironically, at the time, I thought McCain was a little maybe too liberal for my taste on certain things. I thought the campaign finance thing I didn't like. And he won me over on the interrogation that had heard before I worked for him. I disagreed with him on the Guantanamo stuff, but he quickly won me over on that. So anyway, Terry takes a job for McCain in 2008, and so, you know, I got brought along with that. So that was not really out of principle. That was like a career thing, and that was where I had an in.

But I grew to like John McCain very much working for him. And then I come back to D.C., take a break from politics, come out of the closet, need to deal with my personal life. I talk about that a little bit. I'm trying to do too much TMI in the book on that for the Straits, but there's a little bit of that because I think it's important to deal with. And so at that time,

I was kind of out of politics during the Tea Party wave. And I do think, I look back on that now, and I was very, I saw a lot of the, the icky stuff. You know,

there were sure some principal parts of the Tea Party, but there were other parts that I think were obviously bigoted, reactionary, and I saw that at the time. And for a while was maybe considering not getting back into politics. politics. And I got sucked back in for John Huntsman. And that was a case where I was like,

man, I can really do this within my integrity. This is a guy who I agree with on everything, right? I mean, he's pro-life and one smaller government, but he also believes in climate change. And it's for civil unions. And like, this is like my kind of republic. And so I get back in to be his spokesperson. And despite the fact that our campaign didn't do very good, I did pretty good. You know, the Romney people hated me because I was just so brutal at eviscerating them in various attacks. And because I was so good at that, Matt Rhodes at the time said, I want you to come do the RNC. He's like, I can't get you to go to Boston. He's like, too many people hate you here for being mean to met. But I can get you at the RNC and you can make the Obama

people feel like my colleagues fail. And I said, great. So I took that job. And this is, I think, where, you know, as I look back on my career, I start to have a little bit of, not regrets, but like, reflection on how I got really caught up in the moment. I was the R&C's, you know, anti-Obama hitman, like all the Stephen Hayes is calling me, wants to talk to me. That ends. We start America Rising, which is an APO research firm, like, based on savaging Democrats. And it was like, within two years, I went from getting back in to work for a guy,

I really agreed with on everything and was earnest about John Huntsman to, I'm starting an up a research firm savaging every Democrat no matter whether they're moderate or liberal or whatever and I look back

on that and think man I got corrupted in a way more than I realized at the time I just didn't think about it it was part of the political game and so then I got back in

with Jeb I stayed America rising throughout that time then did Jeb which was also an earnest pick I was I was I don't know what this is going to sound self-aggrandizing

or whatever but like multiple candidates were court the word courting like wanted me, you know. But I want a jab. I thought he was the best. I still think that.

I love jab. And then, you know, now we get up to Trump time. And now we get up to Trump time. Collapsing the history of it. I want to dwell for a minute on the, on your sort of on the, I don't know if we'd call it inertia that took you from sort of rejoining Republican politics to becoming this hitman. You spent some time on the book. I find it absolutely fascinating.

I think in some ways your reflections there give people who are not involved in the day-to-day politics one of the best windows on why this happens to people. And you later, I think, can speak with some authority about why this has happened to so many people in the Trump world because this has happened to you before this moment. So what was that like? I mean, how does that happen? It sounds, if you're not in politics, if you work at a bank or, you know, you work the third shift in manufacturing. or something like nobody will understand how you you jump in and you've got this guy and you think

he's great and lots of integrity and you're doing it for the cause and everything and then four years later you find yourself as this total hatchet man like just bringing down the Dems like yeah explain that how does that happen yeah i really i'm glad that you felt that that was a good window because i was writing that for the banker you know i tried to write this book where it's like there's some goodies for steve hayes who knows all this stuff but also that is explanatory for people who are outside of politics and like the initial title for the book was actually the game right and um and i updated it but that's really if i made the book two parts like the first half would have been called the game you know part one um and and and that is you know politics is you know the culture in dc is it's such

this team sport right and and this is obvious but it's worth just kind of thinking about for a second I really was closer in politics to like Heidi Heitkamp, you know, or Joe Anshendor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Then I was to Ted Cruz, right? Honestly. Like, if you went down by down on the issues, okay?

But they were on the other team, right? Like, I picked my team and I was for a moderate republic. And I think this is true on the other side. I tell a story in the book about how there's this guy that interviewed. We said he never voted for Republican president in his life, very prominent person. If I told you this was, you'd be like, what? And he worked for Republicans. Yeah, high-level, high-high-level Republicans,

but they were tended to be the more center-right Republicans. And so he was like, I don't know, I thought Obama was cool that he was the first black president, and Sarah Palin made me worried. And then all of a sudden, in 2012, I took a pass, and then all of a sudden Trump comes around. Here I am 20 years later. I'm a high-level Republican operative.

I never voted. So, you know, I think that that is part of this culture in D.C., and I think it's less so now. We can get into some of that. I think there's some good, all of some bad. But particularly when I was coming up in the post-West wing world, you know, I think that for a lot of people who aren't ideologues, there was this kind of Bush gore, like, is there that much difference between them, right?

Like, Dole Clinton, I wrote about this, and Michael Lewis, right? So he was like, the Dole and Clinton staffers were, like, the same? Like, they basically, like, was there that much of difference between Scott Reed and James Carville, issue by issue? Maybe abortion, right? Yeah, and so you get into the sport of this. You get into the war room side of it. And that's the culture. And so, you know, well, we all get into politics with some earnestness about why we picked aside.

It isn't totally jaded, right? You know, you get caught up in this. And then what happens is you become detached from like, well, what is the point of this, right? I want my person to be elected so that they are, you know, yielding better policy results for people. Like, that becomes totally detached from what a political campaign person, now a policy person in D.C. still thinks about that. But a political campaign person, their job just becomes, what's the tactic that I can use to win? You know, and how can I help my team win?

And that helps my candidates, which in turn helps my career. So there's an ambition element to this. There is people shut, people kind of look down, look at scantz at you. If you bring up moral, ethical, consider that, I mean ethical, ethical, if it goes way over line. But, you know, if you're the person in the room that's like, I don't know, should we really be sending out this tweet? like it's a little it's a little bit over the top right or you know we're really inflaming people should we really send out this email you know if you become the person that's saying that every week you you know you get sent to the back office right like that's not what we're doing here like

we're here to win we're here to raise as much money as we can we're here to help our poll numbers and so and it just happens like that i'm like that was why i tried to tell that story between huntsman and and america rising it was only a year and a half and and and i just justified it You know, part of it's inertia. Part of it's you just put aside, you know, you don't worry about it. Well, I'm just one cog, right? I'm just one cog. And I'm just just the deputy communications director in the RNC.

Like, well, who cares if we put out one email? And what happens is this entire culture, you know, gets created where now in the Trump era, what you and I saw was people don't even think about. People like don't, like don't even, you know, it becomes problematic to point out to somebody that they are complicit in something that is immoral rather than it being problematic to be part of it because that's just the way the culture is. Yeah, I want to dive much deeper in a little bit

in this split between what you call the ideologues and the party establishment types. Because one of the most interesting things as I listened to the book was your sort of constant surprise that these people were doing this. And as somebody who was an ideologue or is an ideologue, I mean, I'm a conservative. I'm a policy guy.

I'm a movement guy. I never cared that much about the politics of it. And to me, it was the easiest thing to understand was that all of you establishment campaign hacks would just flip because you didn't really care about the policies, the way that, you know, you guys would call us the mouth breathers or the, you know, whatever. It's a very, it's a very interesting thing. And we both, I think, respond to it in similar ways. You know, I don't know, you don't want to think the worst of all of your colleagues. I think that there's like a clarity from being outside of it, right?

And this is part of what I'm saying about being caught up in the culture. It's just this one really quick example I included in the book. Two, I pair them together. An Obama staffer at a bar asked me how I sleep at night working for anti-gay candidate.

And I was at a bar full of Democrats. Everyone, the Democrat, we're talking about the Democrats here. Everyone at that bar agreed that that dude was the dick. You know, nobody came out, everybody kind of separated us and they were like, they were chiding him.

And like, are you all right? Like, it's cool. You can hang out with us. Republicans are allowed here. Right. Like, this is, okay. Number two, a guy wrote on my Facebook page, America Rising, degrading the discourse. Like, this, how do you sleep at night? All of my friends. Like, that guy's a dick. That guy's a dick. The dicks were kind of right in both those cases, right? And so I just think that in some levels, like maybe they could have been nicer about it, right? But America Rising was kind of degrading the discourse. It was pretty weird that I was working for an anti-gay marriage candidate being a gay person. You know, there may be justifications for both

things, but they both kind of punctured this little bubble that we all live in, right? And so this is why I think I got so surprised, because I lived in this bubble where I assumed that everybody was kind of like me and had, you know, we're just playing this little game and we all get attention. If things get too far, we'll rain it back in. And that's kind of what I just assumed. Do you assume the best of the people that you're in this, in this little bubble with? And it turned, I turned out to be totally wrong about that. Well, and there's one place where we did have real parallels because I assumed on an ideological level that everybody was the same as me. You know, when I, when I would go, I remember I used this as part of sort of the speeches that

I gave when I talked to groups around the country, there was the Gallup polling on how people self-identify ideologically. And, you know, it would be 38% described, were self-described conservatives, many more than were self-described liberals. And I thought, aha, all these people care about reducing the national debt and strong national defense, just the way I you. And it turns out that couldn't have possibly been wrong. Actually, nobody cares about that. They're like two percent of you. They care about that. Too few people cared about it. Yeah, I got to tell you, Steve, really quick. I did a lot of interviews for the book where I was asking everybody why they did it. And a lot, and out of everybody who went along with the tea party

stuff, not a single interview, did it come up? They say, well, I just had to stick with Trump because I care so much about reducing government spending. I was just so passionate about that. Yeah, I was so passionate about that that that I had to stick along with him. No, yeah, no, I didn't hear that one time. And as a candidate, he didn't even pretend. He ran against Paul Ryan and said, I'm not for entitlement for him. So you mentioned before that you're gay, you do spend some time in the book. I found that really interesting because you related it directly to this sort of introspection that you did through the Trump era.

What was that like? Let me just ask you the question the way that you just framed it. How did you justify working for an anti-gay candidate? You know, the overarching answer is compartmentalization, which I get into in the book. You just tell yourself, how it's not that big of a deal? There are other issues. It's just a job. You know, compartmentalization was made a little easier by things like Obama wasn't for gay marriage when I first started, right?

So you start to justify it. now technically right you that's an easy talking point there's a lot of easy talking at its core this book is about the stories that you tell yourself to tell to to comfort yourself when you're making ethical questions right it's like well yeah it's true oban was against was also against gay marriage but like he was for civil unions and he wasn't for don't ask don't tell right i mean like on balance like okay so but that was something i told myself and and and i also kind of sensed that we were on a glide path towards towards gay rights be, you know, kind of, we're

in the inevitable winners of this, you know, and so I felt like I didn't, I don't need to sound the big of a deal, right? Like, this is going to get resolved here soon in my favor. So I tell myself all these stories and and justify it, you know, I want my candidate to win. And I did an interview with the advocate

about this back in 2009. I was you know, there were other gay out Republicans, but a lot of them had retired. Like 2009, I was like the most prominent, I guess, gay out Republican, really, like staffer. And so, like, did an interview with me about this? How did you do it?

And the answer was basically, well, I wanted John McCain to win. And I figured he couldn't win being for gay marriage. Simple as that. Like, this is the game. Again, you just have to deal with it. And so, okay. I mean, maybe that's, that's defensible, you know, if you feel really strongly about all these other issues. But it's not as if I was dealing with that day and debt and thinking about it and thinking,

okay, well, maybe I should also be fighting for gay rights on the side. I got her right. I should do something out. I wasn't doing any of that. I just was justifying it. And then occasionally things, the little compartment in your brain would break open. I was at the RNC when, oh my God, I'm having a senior moment. What the Supreme, the anti-doma Supreme Court case before Obergefell came down. And I have to help write's masterpiece. Yeah, no, that's the cake shop. The one, oh man, the one before Obergefell shows you, shows you the fact that I wasn't in the fight. I can't remember the name of the Scotus. But the thing that overturned DOMA, the thing that overturned DOMA,

I had to write the press release with Wrights on that. It's just like, and I just remember feeling really bad about that. Like, what am I doing? Why am I doing this? I should be celebrating why Republicans thought this was a bad idea. Yeah, we're against this. Yeah. And, you know, Reince was saying, well, it's good that you're here.

You're helping us tone down the statement or whatever. And so that's another way you justify it. You're like, okay, I'm the good gay in the room, right? Like, I can help make this a little less big. But that wasn't. I wasn't within my integrity. I wanted to be celebrating that day. I don't want to be, you know, wordsmithing some PR statement. And the same thing happens when a burger or burger fell comes down a couple years later. I was with Jeb at the time. And it's just like you feel icky inside.

I'm like, why am I doing this? You know, Jeb's, I think, good at heart on this. I believe that. And so that's another thing you used to justify it. But like, you know, I should have been speaking up about this. And I should have been in this fight. Like, these is the most important things in my life. So anyway, I, my point in the book in telling this is A, to wrap myself on the knuckles.

But B, it's just to say, if I could. justify this, you know, with all of the other rationalizations, some policy, some career-oriented, some just plain compartmentalization, helping people that were actively, you know, trying to prevent what is now, like, the most important things in my life, my husband and my child, how easy is it for somebody then to go work for Trump when their life might not even been affected that much? You know, they just start to think, well, you know, the mean tweets. The border, I'm not at the border, right? Like, how easy, So it doesn't give me empathy for them, really,

but it helps me understand and try to explain their mindset, right? Because it's like, I did it easily. You know, there were only a couple times where I felt bad about myself. And so, and this was something that directly impacted me. A lot of the Trump stuff didn't really directly impact the people that were working for them. It was the ephemeral, right? It was like, what is this impact on the body politic, right? Right, right.

that's a lot, you know, so you can understand why people would go along with it. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain on top of everything else is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy to protect your family's future in minutes, not months. Ethos keeps it simple. It's 100% online, no medical exam, just a few health

questions. You can get a quote in as little as 10 minutes, same day coverage, and policies starting at about two bucks a day, build monthly, with options up to $3 million in coverage. With a 4.8 out of five-star rating on trust pilot and thousands of families already applying through ethos, it builds trust. Protect your family with life insurance from ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch. That's E-T-H-O-S-com slash dispatch. Application times may vary, rates may vary. I want to spend a few minutes on the media because I think this is, especially for our listeners who are not involved in day-to-day politics or not in Washington. This was, I spent a lot of time thinking about conservative media and how conservative media has evolved.

why some of it works, why some of it doesn't work. You and I will have some disagreements here, but I found the section that you devoted to understanding conservative media, and in particular your interactions with conservative media, just really revealing. You were dealing with people at places like Breitbart, having this, you know, very sort of mutually beneficial relationship on a sort of personal, professional level that had, I think, profound long-term consequences for the way that the media operate.

So how did you, you've just described your own approach to this, your own ideology, how did you get to the point where you had very strong relationships with people, Breitbart. You could get stories onto Breitbart. You could get stories into these other sort of alt-right websites. How does that happen as a party guy who doesn't agree with a lot of what you're seeing there? Yeah, relationship building. I thought it was clever. I thought it'd helped my candidates. It did help my candidates at times, right? Help my clients. I want to get a pat on the head from clients. You know, this is why the book is a little, I hope for some people is a little bit universal, right? Is there not analogs to this and business and law and

And so, you know, oil, right? I mean, like, there are a million industries where you're like, well, I want my boss to be happy. And my boss is going to be happy if I land a piece in Breitbart. I went back and read some of the Breitbart articles I landed and I was like, you know, I deserved a medal for some of this stuff. And it was crazy the way that these guys would write nice stuff about, like, my squishy candidates because I favor traded with them. But that's, but explain that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but that's what I'm talking about. Like, how does that work? I mean, and why do you? do it. Like, to me, as somebody who was watching this unfold in real time, I'm looking at positive articles about Jeb Bush and Breitbart. And my thought is, I can't believe Jeb's campaign is normalizing Breitbart. Right. And you were. And they was. Yeah, and I, and I, I fall on my sword on this one. I was. And at the time, you know, you're like, we're in a campaign. Like, we're trying to win. And I've, like, the, who reads Bypar, Republican primary voters that hate us. And so if I can get a

free press release and an article in front of a bunch of Republican primary voters. Like, isn't it my job to do that? And so how did that happen? Spend a minute on that example. I mean, I just think that example was great. And it's an article. I'm using air quotes that people who are listening can't see. But it's an article, but you had a pretty strong hand in making come to pass. Yeah, yeah, sure. Well, so I had a long term. The Breitbart Embassy has these like parties. And so I did a long working what I thought was my job as a PR flag, was meeting media hype. So I went to mainstream media confabs,

and I went to conservative ones. I tried to make friends. I made friends with people at the weekly standard. All across the board, right? And so I'd go to these parties, and I... And the Breitbart Embassy, just to interject real quickly, the Breitbart Embassy is this townhouse on Capitol Hill that Breitbart people bought, and they would throw parties, and some of them maybe lived there and kind of didn't,

and it was a big sort of party house hangout place. Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, I would go there and I built relationships. I bet Steve Bannon at that time and Boyle and you could just go down the list. Gutfeldt was around there all the time now. Now he's on Fox. And so I would go and build these relationships. I did it.

And then we would host, we would host blogger. You know, we'd have all the weekly standard people over and then all the bright bar people over. Then all the daily caller people over to our office at America Rising and kind of tell them about what they're doing, do it for relationship building. I'd throw them favors. You know what we both, a lot of times it was mutual, right? You're just in this, it's a little bit of this cesspool

of like you're trying to spread, it's propaganda, right? You're trying to spread propaganda. Like, let's just be honest. And so if you're a reporter at one of these outlets, okay, you want to come to the America Rising things, you know I'm going to give you a little tidbit on some Democrat that one of our trackers uncovers, right?

Then you get a pat on your head from your boss. That goes up. Then I send that article to Drudge. Then Drudge links it. And now you get a bunch of traffic coming in. Now your boss gets you up and a judge link, just to give people a sense. I mean, a drudge link can take an article that might get 10,000 views and, you know, back in the day could get it three quarters of million views.

I mean, the orders of magnitude that drudge could do, if you got your stories on drudge as a reporter, it was a sign that you were to steal one of your, your phrases describing politicians later in the book in the mix. Like you got it. You were a good reporter. had to read your stuff. The more you want drudge, the better you did, the more people wanted it. And the more likely it was that you'd get more of these kinds of tips. Right. And then the numbers would go up on the site. And so, yeah. So anyway, there's this kind of feedback loop where

my bosses, our donors, our clients, whichever case, are happy because we're getting a clean article and whatever conservative website. A conservative website person's happy because they got an exclusive. We get it to drudge. Everybody's happy. They're getting more clicks. I can, you know, send around the drudge screenshot to our donors. And it's just, you know, it was one part relationship building, you know, and then one part kind of mutually beneficial work product. Here's the thing. And by the way, you know, this book is about Republican politics because that's what I'm in.

There's certainly an element to this on the left, right? Sure. Yeah. For sure, no doubt. I think that, you know, we could get deep into, I think that there are some differences in certain ways. In some ways, sometimes it's like the mainstream outlets that serve this purpose for the left and the ideological outlets are more like hostile and policy-oriented, right?

But like the conservative media, I had three chapters on this, so I'll send you the drafts if you want, Steve. We cut it down to one because I felt like not everybody was obsessed with the conservative media as much as I am. I need them all. I need them all. Yeah, I'll give you, I'll give you the director's cut. But what I basically wrote in the longer version is just how incestuous it is. And it's not, I mean, are there journalists within the conservative media ecosystem? Sure. Yeah, absolutely, right? Are there are there a key incidences of journalism happening in the conservative media ecosystem? Of course. But like, is the whole undertaking journalism? When the donors to America Rising and the NRC are the same as the donors to the conservative media outlet and the main goal is to get on drudge to smear the Democrats so that you can win elections? Like, is this ecosystem journalism? Like, not really, right? And what it's served is, in my opinion, and you can, maybe this is where you disagree with me. I think it just was this feedback loop that we are all complicit in that fed people's anger and grievance.

You know what? And which then, you know, you have to one up yourself, right? And it was funny, I did one, just really quick, one interview with, I was doing a bunch of Breitbart interviews with anyone who talked to me. And it was, and I think this one was on background, so I won't say it was. But the reporter Breitbart says to me when I write in this book, I mean, we were responsible on the January 6th stuff. Look at what Gateway Pundit and Newsmax.

and we're doing compared to us. And it's hilarious because, like, this is what we were saying. This is what you were saying about Breitbart back then, right? And it's just like, you can always one up it. You can always up the ante. And so if there's no, you know, if there's no check, if there's no self-policing, you know, of your, of yourself on your own side, then there's always going to be somebody who's going to get more conspiratorial, more extreme, more ragey. What's the, how do you stop that? We haven't, right?

I mean, it's just, if you just compare 2008 to now, you know, you, you know, you. can see some parallels, but we're just on this, this glide path up. And maybe, I don't know, maybe some things like the Dix dispatch are correcting it now. I mean, there's now starting to be some correctives, but like slowly. I would say it's considerably worse today than it was in that time frame just because of the, the profusion of outlets that are doing this. I mean, it's basically oppo work. Right. And not even, I mean, in a weird way, I would say opposition research in 2008, 2010, time frame was more concerned with presenting things that were true than many of the conservative media outlets do now, right? They just make stuff up out of a whole

cloth. One of my colleagues in Americanizing, because I called this to them, and I'm, you know, I'm still writing in politics, but I'm not in the Republican internecine wars as much, right? Because I'm like, I don't care who wins the Pennsylvania governor's race. They're all terrible as far as I'm concerned. But I called one of it. I was like, I don't feel like I see rising stuff as much anymore. What's the reason? And he's like, dude, you know, you can feel bad about your work here, but like we were always in facts. Like, we always worked in facts. Yeah. Right. And that's true. Like we did. We had our own bumpers and rules. And, you know, there are certain things I wouldn't do because I was like, this feels gross, right? Like, I wasn't

as totally, you know, devoid of morals hatchet, man. Like, we had these kind of imaginary lines that we created, right? And norms. And now he's like, what point does rising serve? Like, why do I, if I give a little fact to whatever, the examiner to write a piece, okay, that's fine about a candidate. But then compare it to, well, Charlie Kirk and Don Jr.'s Twitter feed could just blast out something about that candidate that's a total smear that has nothing to do with reality. And that has a hundred times the views. So like, what's the point? You know, so in some ways, that's that kind of your exact point. Yeah. It's so distorted now. It's hard to even, I mean, there seems to be just a disregard for the truth in politics. And I don't think that I'm precious. Like, I don't look back to, you know, the good old days of everybody telling the truth all the time. But it's, it's distorted to the point of almost unrecognizable today. Can we spend a minute on IJR, independent journal review? You tell the story, you tell it at some length. And I know the story of IJR. I'm sure.

sure some of our listeners used to go to IGR, get their news. Some very good journalists came through IJR, Haley Birdwilt. She got her start in journalism at IJR before she started the weekly standard, went to the CNN, now she's, she does uphill for us and is an extraordinarily talented journalist. But how did IJR come into being? What was their sort of business idea and how did it fare? Because this is a really, I mean, really interesting. part of the book from my perspective. I included them because I felt like they were like this microcosm of what happened to how the discourse got out of control.

And I was buddies with them. And you're right about that, by the way. So as people listen to you talk about it, they should understand this is just what happened again and again and again and again. Yeah. Right. So they started in, I guess it was 11, right around when America Rising started 12. And so, you know, we had these sort of startups at the same time.

And so I knew those guys really well. And their concept was basically taking Facebook memes, like for short or very short articles that would spread on social media and getting people to share them at scale, right? And so they were like really these first of the conservative meme world. You know, so if it was, if in 2004, really good at it, really good at it, clever, funny. And, you know, in 2004, if you were getting the forward emails of like John Kerry, in the football like looking effeminent or whatever like they that was they they updated that for the social media era like the same thing some serious stuff and I interviewed with them and with Bubba Atkinson who was over there and he gave me a

great line for the book he's like when we started it we saw IJR as like this meal it was like the CD what FDA food guidelines he's like we got to give people some veggies we got to give him some meat and then we got to give him some red meat and then it all the way goes up to heroin a little bit of heroin from time to time you know we give them right and uh and i was like okay well you should i guess now we all know where this ends right um you can't just give people a little bit of heroin um and so essentially they they go off to the stratosphere they're end they end up getting more views in a month than than national view and weekly standard getting in a year i mean you know they just they just totally skyrocketed for like

you know because of just the way that social media works and the way that they could you know exponentially expand the eyeballs um and and this is during the, you know, now the 14 midterm and then up into the 15, you know, Republican presidential primary. The guy who started it says, okay, now we have all these eyebrows. I want to go mainstream. I want to be the buzzfeed of the right, basically, right? I want to be center-right buzzfeed.

And so, you know, we'll people take us seriously. We'll have real reporters. We'll also have meme reporters. And, like, we'll balance all this in one website that's like a modern website. To me at the time, I was like, that's a great idea. You're going to be a billionaire. there. Like, this makes total sense. Like, this is needed out there. What happens? Trump comes into the picture. And all of a sudden, the list viewers of this website didn't want joyful, funny memes that

like made fun of everybody in power. Like, they wanted Trump propaganda. And the people at the site that were willing to deliver them that, Benny Johnson, can I say Benny Johnson on this website? Like, did very well because they started getting more and more clicks because they saw what the audience was going. The people at the site who want like Haley. I assume I didn't interview Haley for this, but the people who are providing real reporting, they weren't getting that good of numbers. And, you know, all of a sudden, this wasn't tenable. And it was basically the same thing that was happening over in the primary, where you had

Marco Rubio was the Haley stand-in and her staff. They're trying to kind of balance, giving people a little bit of red meat with also being serious and offering policy. But the people are like, no, I want that guy that's going to tell me everything that I want to hear and feed my grievances. The same thing was happening in the media world at the same time. And so others looked at saw IJR and saw the opportunity. There are many imitators, Charlie Kirk, we just mentioned one of them.

And eventually, you know, very quickly, actually, IJR just gets out blanked, right? Like other people are willing to give all heroin all the time. And so like the tiny bit of heroin, you know, next to spinach wasn't selling. It wasn't even cream spinach. No, regular spinach. People didn't want the spinach. So IJR collapses. So it goes from having more eyeballs than literally anything except for Drudge and Fox for a moment to now being gone.

If you Google, IJ review on Google, it says, it says, did you mean in review? It doesn't even show. It's like completely gone. And that fast disappeared. Well, this is, I mean, as I'm listening to the book, I would get frustrated with you for your just sort of relentless cynicism. Just be like, Tim, come on. Don't be so cynical. you would talk about something like January 6th,

when on January 6th, you predicted, eh, these guys are all going to come back, which I certainly didn't believe. And I'm like, okay, maybe cynicism is called for here. But you have a line in the book, and I didn't write it down because I was driving. But you sort of look at the daily caller, which had not exactly the same path,

but a similar path where they start out, founded by Tucker Carlson, and he goes to CPAC and gives a big speech and says he wants to be the New York Times, right. And this is going to be reporting. It's going to be serious. They're going to do thoughtful work, et cetera, et cetera. IJR has the same thing. And you get to the point in the book where you almost mock, I mean, not almost, you directly mock anyone who would think that they could create a center-right media company that would do serious reporting. You can imagine how that didn't

hit right with me. You're basically like, please people are morons if they think that they can pull this off. Nobody wants this. And I would just say to you, does nobody want this? I mean, I can assure you that we are not going to go the clickbait way at the dispatch and provide more heroin. We're not going to provide any heroin. We're not going to provide more heroin than we do stuff that provides actual intellectual and civic nourishment. But does that mean that we're destined to fail? Well, I said in the book that, or I said, I wanted people like Steve Hayes to feel seen. So I'm glad that I seem to have achieved that. And I also wanted to at least convince a couple of people to quit their jobs, but not at the dispatch. Maybe it's some of those other outlets, quit their jobs,

or some of those other candidates. What I said, and I think the federalist was the other example, they were supposed to be the Atlantic of the right, right? Correct. Yes, that's right. There was a BuzzFeed, the Atlantic of the New York Times of the right, and all have either failed or turned into just like, you know, Trumpian ball cupers, right? And like, that's it. And so, okay, maybe there's an appetite for this. I do think, well, I mean, I say we're at the bulwark. We're center, you know. And so I think that there are niche ways. I love what you guys are doing. I love what the bulwarks doing. Obviously, we're different. We get into that a little bit if you want. But, I mean, I think that the idea that is there an audience for center-right

journalism? Yeah, sure. Sure, there is. But it's just niche? Yeah, it's niche. I mean, you're not It's competing with, yeah, I don't, I think so. I mean, I think, why can something like, why could something like the Atlantic, center left does, I think, very good journalism, agree with some of it, disagree with a lot of it. I find it engaging. I find it well written, well edited. And, you know, what do they have? A million paying subscribers, something on the order of a million paying, maybe it's not that many. Tremendously successful.

New Yorker is sort of the same way. I mean, the dispatch is not the Atlantic. The dispatch is not the North Carolina. We don't want to be. But why should we believe, unless you have this sort of built-in hostility to people on the right and think that they're incapable of that kind of thoughtful discourse or interested in that kind of good writing, why can't that work? Now we're getting interesting.

I like this. Okay, two things that's happening. One, just to be clear, what I said in the article, so I know that we're dispatched is feeling a little touchy, but what I said is that the notion that you could have. have a New York Times, an Atlantic, or a BuzzFeed, where the serious center-right stuff lives in harmony with the heroin pro-Trumpie memes is not sustainable. And so the dispatch isn't trying to do that. So you weren't exactly what I was talking about. Why don't I think the dispatch could have the scale at the Atlantic? I do think, and you might say this is hostility,

I don't think so. The nature of the coalitions are different. And like, that's just as true. And the Republican coalition has gotten less and less interested in the, you know, sort of like policy heavy material. I just, I think that if you deny, look, I think that there's some parallels between the right and the left. I think the way that we are driving each other's rage and grievance is a total parallel. And I think that's fair. I think the, you know, the way that, like the tactics that are used on the left, I've been criticizing the way that they're like pushing up these insane. idiots like in Illinois and Pennsylvania to win primaries and getting it right so tactically there's some parallel so look I'm not saying that the left is angels but but I think that

there are also some differences and and the rights coalition right now like has proven over the last six years to not have like the antibody the people that are interested in in like having like these more serious debates there are some people obviously there's the Wall Street Journal editorial board that is that is doing it like there are some serious there are commentary you guys aren't the only ones to do serious stuff sure no but like the reality is that that a lot of the college educated centrist voters left the republican party in the last six years and they've been replaced by non-college educated culturally conservative working class voters i just i are some of those people i'm not saying that because they're not

college educated they can't read the dispatch like i'm not saying that they're idiots but like what are they interested in? I just think you just look at the evidence. Look at what is happening in the Democratic primaries and Republican primaries. You can say, well, and both sides are moving to the extremes. That's true. But on the Democratic primaries, they're moving to the extremes on these like weird liberal like Harvard faculty lounge, you know, policy oriented stuff. Like we want to expand the Supreme Court and we want to, you know, whatever. We need socialized medicine. And we, you know, it's like policy lefty stuff. In the Republican primaries, what is happening is, like, we need to pretend that the Chinese

stole the 2020 election and that vaccines don't work. And like, so the nature of the extremism is different. And so I think that if you, you know, sort of like I was saying, if there was this parallel in the 2020 primary between IJ as Marco and Trump as whatever the daily caller, this is still this is still happening right now. And I think that, I don't know. To me, I think that for the dispatch to become big, you should probably try to start appealing to center-left people.

I think that's more likely than appealing, than creating a plate that also brings in some of the megafocles. Maybe I'm wrong about that. I don't think so, though. No, I mean, it's an interesting answer. I guess I'm first interested in the fact that I ask a question about journalism, and you answer it, I think, in a political frame, right? I ask a question about whether something like this, like a center-left or a center-right

Atlantic or New Yorker could succeed in whether the audience is there for that. And you talked about coalitions, which maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I don't think about it as a coalition. Like, I'm not, I don't, we're not trying to put together a coalition. I want to do really interesting journalism. And the question to me is whether there are enough people who would be interested in that really interesting journalism that comes to questions, issues of politics, policy. and culture from a center-right perspective. I don't care. I don't care much about practical politics

these days. I certainly care a lot less about it than I used to, and I don't, like, I guess I don't think about this stuff in terms of coalitions. Am I over-reading your framing or putting words in your mouth? Well, no, I was just trying to, I guess the point that I was trying to make is I was talking about the Democratic and Republican coalitions, and you're just assuming that a center-right readership would come from within the Republican coalition. And I was expressing why I think that that is not, why that hasn't worked like to date. I mean, again, I think it works to a degree. I'm not saying the dispatch hasn't worked, but why kind of putting together an audience for journalism that combines center-right journalism, serious journalism, with like things that appeal to the rest of

the Republican coalition. I don't think that has worked. And that's why, because the audience, no, I don't, I mean, I think that you guys are doing good. I don't, I think that like the notion that could we write journalism? I'm not fishing for compliments here. I've really not. No, but I do think I know people that right. I talk to people who are like liberals who read that so this isn't about coalition building. It's about audience, right? Like the dispatch is probably in journalism that is a different perspective from what they are reading day and day out in their feeds, right? Like you guys have a different background and focus on some different issues. So sure, I could that, could that work? I guess so. I think that that could work. But I, but then I think that

reflects the fact that's a different strategy than what I'm talking about in the book you know with okay now there still is a different challenge that we come to it's I guess you might think it's political and it might not be political not journalism but it's like yeah speaking to those other people like who's speaking to the people that are and for a while I think there was this idea that you could kind of you know work your way and and speak to the like mega conspiratorial kind of crowd on the same platform that you're providing you know fact-based journalism and like there's just not a lot of evidence

that that is that that's happening and so then I think there's another kind of cultural societal question which is how do we reach these people that's not what I get into in the book that's a different question with Amex platinum access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot track side so being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime

that's the powerful backing of Amex pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race turns and conditions apply Learn more at mx.ca.ca slash YMex. You anticipated where I wanted to go next because the second half of the book is a really interesting, almost zoological, anthropological, sociological assessment of who were the Trump supporters, Trump enablers. Why did they do what they did? I mean, the title of the book. And I think it's fascinating.

I have lots of differences, probably within some of the examples you gave and a big picture difference that I want to explore with you. Before we do that, explain to our listeners, why did people generally and get into your categories? Because I think they're very interesting. Why did people come to support Donald Trump who might not have been expected to support Donald Trump? Yeah, there were a lot of them. I'll start with the one that surprised me the most. which shouldn't be surprising now, but at the time, demonization of the left, like just a deep well of hatred. And just really quick, I want to say, this book is not about Steve, like,

this is not about ideal law or even people more ideological than you, ideologically rigid. I just, I didn't think that's interesting, or it's interesting, but I could write a whole another book about it, right? I mean, it would have had to be a 400-page book for me to go through. Well, abortion is the reason they went along with it, or because they feel very strongly about the border. You know, like, we could go through everybody's, issue. I'm talking about people who are generally conservative-ish, Republican-ish, but new Trump was a lunatic. And why did they go along with it? Like, these are my case studies, and the zoo, and the zoological, that's the zoo that I'm working with it. And the emphasis

was on party people, right? I mean, you were talking about political, you know, more, not all of them. I mean, the Alyssa, the Alyssa Farah, the section was really interesting to me. But, you know, you focused on political people. Yeah, people that I worked with that I knew for my life, R&C, people, et cetera. So, yeah, the thing that was the most surprising was just this demonization. I don't know.

This goes back to the tongue-in-cheek thing with Steve, circling back to why I feel bad about this. I was attacking Obama tongue-in-cheek. I didn't like it. I disagreed with Obamacare on balance. Like, you know, I mean, I disagreed with various things that he did. I didn't think his foreign policy was great. But I didn't hate Obama.

I would have to go have dinner with Obama. We both like basketball, you know, we both agreed on immigration and gay stuff. I'm sure there are a couple other issues that we agreed on if I thought about it. Like, I didn't hate him. My friends worked for Obama. We had fight on Twitter and then go have beers after. Like, that was like our life. And there's something a little gross about that in retrospect, I think.

And so I projected that onto all my colleagues. And I think that I thought everybody else was sort of, it was like a little bit of world ride wrestling. There's a little bit of wrestling element to this. Like, we all kind of tend to like Mitt Romney and McCain better, but, you know, we don't hate him. We don't think that he's from Africa and, like, you know, condescending, you know, all these sort of racially coded things that people hated them and all the other reasons. So, okay, that was wrong. I found out when I was interviewing everybody, particularly the on background interviews that I didn't get to name in the book.

But, like, people that worked for moderate Republicans across D.C., they hated Obama, like, really viscerally hated him. They were not tongue-in-cheek like me. And they hate the left, they hate the pronouns, they hate the cousin that has purple hair, you know, all these different reasons. I had the Carol Hein Rand interview. You know, she goes on this whole rant about people in their Priuses with their coexist stickers and their coffee culottas. And I was like, I live in Oakland with my husband and my black daughter.

She goes to like every person at the school that she goes to voted for Bernie. Some of my friends are there. Like, this is just not me. I didn't have that. I didn't have that hatred of the left. So that surprised me, the demonization. And then just quickly through the others, you know, just a general inertia about your career, hard to come up with a new, it's hard to change your career, to change your identity.

Like I'm a Republican, my friends are Republicans, I go to Republican bars. Can I really change that over Donald Trump? Can I lose friends? You and Jonah went through this. That's hard. It's hard socially. And if you've seen yourself as if the peak of the career you imagine for yourself is running Republican presidential campaigns or in your case, standing at the White House podium for a Republican president,

you're taking a huge departure if you bail on our Republican who's the nominee. Yeah, if you bail, right? It's much easier to say, okay, I'll just go take a job working for John Cornyn and hang out for four years, right? Or whatever, you know. So there's that. Then this D.C. kind of culture stuff, desire to be in the mix. I want to be in the room where it happened.

Like, this was a huge thing for people. the Trump thing gave people a opportunity. There was straight ambition. Like I use Elise Stefonic. Like, I'm a striver. I want to be on the VP shortlist next time. I can go. There's a down market version of that that's like Stephanie Grisham.

I could never have been in the White House. If it wasn't for Donald Trump, why wouldn't I take it now? That was a big one. And then, you know, then there were people that rationalized it because, well, if I walk off the field, who could, who might it be? You know, it might be a white nationalist. that takes my job or it might be somebody else. I need it, actually.

Those were the general, you know, categorizations. There were some other ones, but like those were the main ones of the interviews. So I think it's your last one where I, where I wouldn't, it's too strong to say I would disagree with you, but I would say even as cynical as I can sometimes be after having lived through the last eight years, I'm not that cynical. I think some people who went in to- Can I just interrupt and say, I am earnestly cynical? Sometimes cynicism comes with like a not a belief that things can't get better.

I'm earnest, but abjaded. How about that? I just want to correct the language. You disagree with that? You don't even think I'm earnest? I mean, straight cynical. I think you're, yeah. I mean, I think you're earnest, but I would say that you're, at least in the book, I would say that you're earnest about different things than you're cynical about.

Like, there's not a lot of hope in the book, right? Like, I don't finish the book and think, like, oh, this is going to get better. Yeah, that's going on. Nobody, nobody could read it and think that way. But I want to go back to that because, I mean, you know, we probably talk to many of the same people. But, you know, particularly in the months after Trump won the Republican nomination and then certainly after Trump was elected and before he was inaugurated, I was talking to a lot of these people who would go on and fill very senior roles at the White House and the, administration broadly, cabinet secretaries, what have you. And, you know, the argument I would get or the case that they would make was I need to be in the room where this has happened, where these

decisions are making, are being made so that when there comes something catastrophic, I can weigh in. I can reshape it. I can help. And I mean, people can't see your face right now, but you're looking at me right now like I'm crazy to have thought that. There's a lot of evidence. There's a lot of evidence. It's 2022, right? Did I do a time machine back to a 2017 interview? So the best case, the best case against your cynicism and for my eternal optimism

are the people that were seeing testify before the January 6th committee. I mean, and even before that, Bob Barr, you're certainly fair to say you're not a fan of, or Bill Barr. Bill Barr, not Bob Barr, probably not a fan of Bob Barr. I was Bob Barr. Attorney General Bill Barr He's horrible. Quits and says this is a marker, this is too far. Pat Cipollone, White House Counsel. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I'm sorry. Bill Barr quit and wrote a press release about how great Donald Trump was as a leader and how honored he was to work with him and how he's a wonderful.

It'll go down in the annals of history as the greatest orange president of all time. And then testified a year later. correct after a year after january 6th just just for the record he didn't quit fair enough fair enough you could probably add more details there but quit you try to convince the president that the arguments that he was making about the stolen election were in in bars parlance bullshit um has testified against trump in these depositions for the january 6 committee pat sepollone there's you know endless stories about pat sepollone white house council beating back the

Sidney Powell's and the John Eastman's and these others. There's Eric Herschman who defends the president in his first impeachment trial. I thought the president should have been impeached and convicted. Eric Herschman defended him on something I thought was indefensible, but speaks out and says, now, like, this is too much, this is too far.

And you can go on. I mean, there are lots of people like this, but of course, the big one would be Mike Pence, who at some, I would say, personal risk to his own security, having lived through four years of this and fluffed Trump and polished him and all of the things that you would say, but ultimately does the right thing when it's really, really hard to do. I'm not saying that these are sort of heroes who we should teach our children in history, but they did the right thing at a difficult time. And I think

in some ways justified the argument that I need to be there for when something really bad happens, I can do the right thing. I mean, Steve, okay. I don't know. Cassidy did the right thing. All these other people, look, we were, we were really, really close to like a just unsalvageable constitutional crisis. Correct. And the only thing that stopped out of the people. that you've criticized. Right? No. I mean, well, I guess what's out to was Joe Biden winning the election. And that's what happened. Joe Biden won four states. What if you'd only won one? What if you don't been only one state? You know, what if they're only been one state? And then we could just pray to God that was Brad Raffinsberger in that state. Brad Ravinsberger did a great job. Good for

Brad Ravonsberger. I've had nothing but unvarnished compliments for him. Just like I was very nice to Lissa, I thought, in the book, and very praiseworthy of Cassidy. Some people can do the right thing unimpeachably. Here's the problem that I had. Everyone in D.C. And you know this back in your conversation, 2017. Everybody who went in and used that same argument. Ooh, I need to be in there, Steve. I need to be in there. You need somebody like me in there. We need good people. It's the government. It's our government. How many people that went, how many politicals worked for Trump over four years? Thousands? How many people in 2020 said, this is a crazy man and we need to stop him and we need to support Joe Biden because he's the only one that can stop him? Or if you can't

get around to Joe Biden if you're a conservative dispatch listener. We need to have someone primary him, which is something that I worked my ass off to try to recruit somebody to primary him. Nobody would do it. So then the next step was to work for Joe Biden. Nobody. Like, Olivia Troy, Elizabeth Newman, Miles. Like, that's the list. Like, that's the list who came out in this whole enormous government. And you still have some of those same people saying that they will support Trump, saying Trump trying to steal an election. function. But he's still better than the left because I don't want my grandkid doing she, putting they, them in their email signature. I'm sorry. There's some things that are wrong

with the left, I'm sure. But like, but, but, okay, this is, this was an existential threat and everyone knew it. It wasn't like this big secret that he came up at January. Anybody who went in, and Bill Barr, are you kidding me? Like, he went and took the job as attorney general after he saw all the things that Donald Trump did to Jeff Sessions. Like, some of these people went in after Charlottesville and yeah i mean all of you you have a great litany in the in the book you have a great like i forget who you were describing but it's like after this and after this after this and after this they still went in it's a stunning list okay yeah lafayette park and so i just you know this was my problem with alissa and i was i thought fair to her but i was like

why didn't you leave she gives me a whole list of all the things that she prevented while she was inside and i did a whole podcast with her so i'm not speaking of the school you can listen to the ryan lizza podcast if you want to hear us go back and forth on this but She's like, he wanted to do the Insurrection Act and he wanted to fire Esper and he wanted to make Scott Atlas the head of the pandemic response and on and on. And I'm saying, Alyssa, this is a madman. And this is a madman that tried to end our democracy and wanted to put a quack in charge of a deadly pandemic that was killing, killed over a million people. Like, this is a person with no self-control. Everyone saw this. Why didn't, why didn't anybody waive the flag? Okay, but what do you mean? John Kelly, Jim Mattis, H. H.R. McMass, Mr. Cohn, Dina, I had to listen to all this bullshit about how they were in there saving us for years. None of them supported Joe Biden. None of them helped to do a primary. No, but you don't, I don't think it has to be a political binary. I don't think it has to be a political binary. I mean, H.R. McMaster argued against the precipitous withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

That would have led to arguably a greater catastrophe than we saw with Joe Biden. You know, you had people, you had members of Congress who were supporting Trump. People voted for that. People voted for that. Okay. And I'm not saying we had to just let the world burn, but maybe we could have had 17 Republicans with balls that would have convicted him if it was Lynn Wood and Sidney Powell running the White House at the end. Okay. I just, this is a counterfactual, but we went through two impeachments of him in an election and none of these people showed the balls to do anything about it. They tell me that they're saving the country, but they don't actually do anything to stop him. I don't know. You know, Mitch McConnell goes. gives us a speech. Maybe if we let Donald Trump unadulterated Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani run around the White House for two months, maybe Mitch McConnell would have come up with the stones to actually convict him. And then we'd be done with this. And by the way, for conservative listeners, what would be happening right now? Ron DeSantis would be the person. You would get Ron DeSantis. This is what I don't know. This is the thing I tried to deal with this whole time. This is illogical.

It's irrational. This notion that they were protecting us or saving us or helping us. They were protecting themselves. I'm sorry. They're protecting themselves in their career. I don't think these two things are mutually exclusive. I mean, I think many of the people that we've talked about took the jobs because they have great ambition. They wanted to be famous. They liked the title. All of the stuff. They wanted to be in the room.

They wanted the power. All the stuff. None of what I'm saying is an effort, and I assume you know this by now, to exonerate those people from that bad behavior. I've been fairly critical of them, of Mitch McConnell. I just think that this is a pernicious excuse that a lot of people have gotten away with because it's cozy. It's comfortable. But it's also true. right i mean it's also true right like if if ryan's previous hadn't been the first chief of staff it

could well have been steve bannon that would have been a disaster right maybe maybe but that's what people voted so what happens but what happens then what happens in that case i don't know i i don't know maybe we do if none of the good people do it if none of the good people take the jobs i got but here's i think steve here we are we're still going round around we're having all these arguments we have to listen to people be like well it wasn't a real muslin ban they just put people with green cards is in cages in the airport for a minute. Maybe we had to have an actual Muslim ban. Then the rest of these cowardly Republicans who went in along with the Republican with a Muslim ban could have campaigned in 2018 and 2020 on their support for a real Muslim ban

if Steve Bannon was in there. I don't know. That would have been unconscionable, but we voted for it. That's what the country voted for. I just, look, I think H.R. McMaster is a different case. A national security case, I get it. But you're telling me that you're like some some com staffer that you're saving things from happening? I don't I don't buy it. That Reince was saving things and making things better. Reince was, really? I'm not buying it. John Kelly, who

implemented the damn Muslim ban, then gets a promotion. Well, where was he? Where were all these people? These guys, all these guys, the generals that were supposed to be saving us, they were marching with him through Lafayette Square, breaking up a peaceful protest with tear gas. Doesn't it

help that somebody like John Kelly comes out and is able to offer firsthand criticism doesn't help that that mark esper is able to do that i don't know i beg john kelly to do it i beg john kelly to do a republican voters against trump at he wouldn't he didn't do it i don't he still criticized trump he has authority i was in there barely does anybody actually use it did everybody was it useful i trump got trump got babyed again and again by a bunch of people who got huge benefit from from jobs that they never would have gotten and and protected him from his worst instincts. You know, should we have had somebody making sure he can't push the button on a nuke? Absolutely. Like, was it good that H.R. McMaster was

in there? Absolutely. Should people have had to live through the consequences of their actions? And might we be in a better place? Might everybody, might the country, might conservatives be in a better place if Donald Trump had to deal with the consequences of his own beliefs and behavior and actions? Maybe not. I don't know. It's a counterfactual. But that's what I think. And I just think that the evidence is that we're sitting here and he's still around in 2022. He's still getting babyed. And here we are. I hate that we're out of time.

I hate that I've gone six minutes over because I feel like we're just on the verge of solving this right now. You do? We're about to reach a breakthrough moment. This is your point. My publisher said, okay, so usually these books have a chapter at the end. You've written books like this. You know about this.

It's like, now what? And I started to write that chapter. And I'd look and then I messaged him. I was like, this isn't one of those books. This books isn't getting a what now chapter. I'm sorry. We're just, this is just real talk.

And, you know, we can all get together and maybe have another meetup to discuss what happens next. Well, I do think, I do think people should take the time to read the book. It is fascinating. I said it's insightful again and again and again and again.

I think certainly part of it is because, you know, we lived in some ways parallel lives in some ways, very different lives. But really worth the time. And I'm glad you came. here to talk to us about it. It was great. Steve, keep my man Declan in check over there, okay? It's hard. It's a full-time job. I know. I know. He's tough. And it's so good to be

with you. We can do this another hour sometime. Maybe we can move for inverse. I'll take the mic next time. Let's do it. I'm for it. All right. Later, man. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, your writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place. With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one. Use one of their award-winning templates or try the new Blueprint AI, which tailors a site for you based on your goals and style. It's quick, intuitive,

and requires zero coding experience. You can also tap into built-in analytics and see who's engaging with your site and email campaigns to stay connected with subscribers or clients. And Squarespace goes beyond design. You can offer services, book appointments, and receive payments directly through your site. It's a single hub for managing your work and reaching your audience without having to piece together a bunch of different tools. All seamlessly integrated. Go to Squarespace.com slash dispatch for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.