Thank You for Your Servitude Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission

This is a much more, frankly, Republican book because the people who allowed Donald Trump to happen, Donald Trump to get elected, Donald Trump to thrive, Donald Trump to be rehabilitated over and over and over again and continue to be the most potent force in the Republican Party are largely Republicans.

It's out July 1st, I believe. Well, it's available for pre-order now on Amazon. Thank You for Your Servitude. It is, the subtitle is Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission.

Mark Leibovich, a staff writer at The Atlantic published a unique book on the Trump era. It's one that hit a side of it that has been the most fascinating to me personally. Thank You for Your Servitude, his book, isn't about Donald Trump. It is about the Republicans who bent the knee to him.

Your new book is Thank You for Your Servitude, Donald Trump's Washington, and the Price of Submission.

It's called Thank You for Your Servitude, Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission.

This is a really funny, funny book.

I love that you focused on the enablers because they're really almost worse in some weird way.

Kevin McCarthy, hands down.

McCarthy is I think first among equals because he just works at it so hard. He is constantly on the phone. He was the first to really do a very public ring kissing down at Mar-a-Lago after January 6th.

Mark, what does it say that Vivek Ramaswamy outlasted the former vice president of the United States?

I mean, you know, it's as you said, it's not a surprise at all. I mean, this is not Mike Pence's time. I'm not convinced it's Vivek Ramaswamy's time either. But I mean, I think this has been I mean, it's been kind of in the works for a long time.

I mean, he did one quite heroic and courageous deed, which was his job, which was to certify the election for Joe Biden.

And that, you know, almost just on that day disqualified him from ever being president or nominee of the Republican Party.

Mark Leibovitch, staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Thank You for Your Servitude, Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission.

The wonder of this was that many Republicans agree with Cheney. Quite a few of them members of her caucus. They say as much, tell her what a great job she's doing, how heroic she's been. But they only ever tell her this privately, always privately, just between you and me. Please don't repeat this off the record, OK?

The working title for this book when I was working on it was, They All Know Better. And they do.

His most recent is Thank You for Your Servitude.

If there anybody that's read, thank you for servitude or why we did it.

Mark, congrats again on the book. What are you looking for from the former president when he makes his return to the nation's capital today?

And as I say in my book and you say in your book, and look, we all have books, right? It's, you know, this is like the lies have been enabled. I mean, the lies have become the truth from the Republican Party.

Mark Liebberwich, thank you so much. His new book is Thank You for Your Servitude, Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission.

I did not want to write another Trump book. I'm not trying to outdo anyone as far as finding the killer White House anecdote about Donald Trump feeding dog food to Mike Pence or something.

I wanted to focus on the enablers, the Republican Party, the people in Washington and basically Washington was dominated in these years by Donald Trump and his Republican sort of lap dogs who made it work for them.

I could get Trump on the phone faster than any staff person who worked with them could get him on the phone.

There was always a breathless racing quality to both men's voices when they talked about the thrill ride of being one of Trump's guys.

It's been said before but can never be emphasized enough without the complicity of the Republican Party, Donald Trump would just be a glorified, geriatric, Fox-watching golfer.

It's been said before, but never can be emphasized enough, without the complicity of the Republican party...

I've interviewed scores of these collaborators trying to understand why they did what they did and how they could live with it. These were the Kevin McCarthys and the Lindsey Grahams and all the other busy parasitic suck ups who made the Trump era work for them, who humored and indulged him all the way down to the last exhausted strains of American democracy.

I've known both men, Graham and McCarthy, for years. They are classically Washington types, fun to be around, starstruck, and desperate to keep their jobs or get better ones, to maximize their place in the all-important mix.

On various occasions, I've asked them in so many words, how they could sidle up to Trump like they have. The answer basically is that they did it because it was the savviest course, because it was best for them.

Nearly all elected Republicans in Washington needed Trump's blessing and voters to remain there. People like McCarthy and Graham benefited a great deal from making it work with Trump or managing the relationship as they say.

Mark is the author of five excellent books, including two number one New York Times bestsellers, this town, and thank you for your servitude.

His in-depth analysis of D.C.'s most powerful players is the subject of his latest book, Thank You for Your Servitude, Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission.

You wrote a book called Thank You for Your Servitude, Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission.

I didn't want to try to add to the body of journalism or sort of author-ism towards White House intrigue or trying to understand the psychology of Donald Trump. I thought an under-told story of these years was the Enablers, were the people who allowed Donald Trump to happen.

And that ostensibly became the Republican Party. So this was a book about the people who knew better. This was a book about Lindsey Graham. This is a book about Kevin McCarthy. It's a book about Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, go down the list. And essentially, the Republican Party became the party of surrender to Donald Trump.

And I describe this quite a bit in the book. I mean being around him is not a fun proposition. He does not look like he's having fun trying to ward off the next Donald Trump tantrum every day or deal with, like, you know, whatever blowup or whatever, you know, acting out he has to deal with on a day-to-day basis.