Why We Did It A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell

joining us today writer at large at the Bulwark author of the best-selling book why we did it a travelogue from the Republican road to hell friend of the pod Tim Miller

You wrote this fantastic book. It is about why so many of your Republican friends and colleagues ended up going full MAGA, which we will get to, but you were pretty tough on yourself and I would argue more self-reflective and self-critical than most people in professional politics.

I felt like I had to do it if I was gonna write about them in the first part.

I did something good in 2016, which was I said, fuck this. I'm not going to vote for Donald Trump. I'm going to support Hillary Clinton.

I think that that part was like looking at my... Explaining my own actions was so important.

The book is Why We Did It, a travelogue from the Republican road to hell. Everyone go read it.

joining us today writer at large at the Bulwark author of the best-selling book why we did it a travelogue from the Republican road to hell friend of the pod Tim Miller

You wrote this fantastic book. It is about why so many of your Republican friends and colleagues ended up going full MAGA, which we will get to, but you were pretty tough on yourself and I would argue more self-reflective and self-critical than most people in professional politics.

I felt like I had to do it if I was gonna write about them in the first part.

And I felt like by exploring that in the book, hopefully it shined more of a light on the rationalizations that these other folks used to go along with Donald Trump.

It's an incredible examination of all the ways people compartmentalize their support for Trump or I guess their political lives versus the things they essentially believe in.

I think the book is really good and it's really worth reading and it is dark at times.

I love Tim Miller's book, Why We Did It. Tim Miller is a longtime Republican operative who basically wrote about his journey to disenchantment in the Trump years.

Our latest pick is Why We Did It, a travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell by Tim Miller.

I didn't realize that everybody was already reading it along with you.

Well, your book is pretty savage to a lot of powerful Republicans.

you write about all these motivations in the book

I hope folks enjoyed it and I can take negative feedback, you know, too. I'm a big boy.

Our latest pick is Why We Did It, a travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell by Tim Miller.

I didn't realize that everybody was already reading it along with you. That's so exciting. Hopefully they enjoyed it.

Your book is pretty savage to a lot of powerful Republicans. One of the memorable things that you write early on is that you know this book would be cathartic for some liberals to read just to read a dunk fest essentially on people like Sean Spicer, other Republicans.

Your book talks about friends, colleagues, people you respect who went along with a man that you saw as morally abhorrent and you yourself, you're part of the push to get Scott Pruitt to be the EPA administrator.

It has been an absolute pleasure talking to you and a pleasure reading your book.

I'm a huge, huge evangelist for not only Tim, but also for your book, Why We Did It. Why We Did It. I have it right here.

I know Charles C. Johnson very well.

Back in the day, back when I was an oppo man, we used to kind of trade tips, trade material.

He was deep, deep in the alt-right, maybe before alt-right was even a popularized term in Bannon world.

At the time I was kind of a moderate Republican working for more moderate candidates.

And so occasionally we would have common foes in Republican intraparty fights or sometimes Democrats. And so Charles and I had a relationship for a while where we would trade info and give him stuff for his crazy fucking blog.

There's a really good book about this called Why We Did It. It's about how basically all these assholes that work on all these campaigns all agree with us on everything in private, basically.

I was really interested in Tim Miller's book, Why We Did It? A travel log from the Republican road to hell.

It's not just in politics where people work outside their integrity because they're competitive because they want to succeed because they're the pay for their kids college fund.

I'm really good at Whitty Bonn Moths. I'm really good at attacking people. I'm good at finding a news story that can define an opponent. I'm good at narratives and messaging 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 because that's my job and the culture of other people in that job was such that incentivized conformity.

what does you get it mean? It's not that you get you know how important it is that we're doing here and you get the like really the you know that you know that the long tail factor of this is public service. You get it means you get the game, you get how to manipulate it, you get how to play it.

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 rootless career-ridden good hearts and yellow bellies living out our lives for the easy buck the soft birth indulging ourselves in the illusion that we can deal in self without becoming the thing we touch