Finish What We Started The MAGA Movement’s Ground War to End Democracy

Finish What We Started: The MAGA Movement's Ground War to End Democracy.

I'm not in the rebuilding business, I'm in the tearing down business.

Trump viscerally understands the aesthetics of power and how to make himself a vehicle a vessel for the grievances and desires of a lot of Americans

Trump is not dumb but that he's just the instrument to getting what he wants

By the way, that's a good book that we should start promoting. And I wrote that four years ago. It's just as applicable today as it was back then.

The reporting really started in early mid-2021 when Trump himself was really out of the picture. But there was a lot of action going on on the ground among Trump supporters that we didn't know how it was going to turn out at the time. But in hindsight and through the story as it shaped up for this book, really paved the way for his comeback and the way that the party has consolidated around election denial in the last several years.

And so I was just out meeting so many people who were not famous names and were never going to be headline makers in a newspaper article, but struck me as being kind of the most meaningful and interesting conversations that I was having.

The true believers were seeking not self advancement but rather self renunciation swapping out their individual identities with all their personal disappointments for a chance to acquire new elements of pride, confidence, hope, a sense of purpose and worth by identification with a holy cause.

I think that if you're presenting things with context then people are smart. Messages can be dangerous when they spread in a vacuum but when you're giving people context and treating people respectfully I think that people can be responsible.

Democracy is not just a system of government. It's a form of associated living. Actually forcing ourselves to interact on that human level is really healthy and it helps to avoid getting so dug in and viewing each other as enemies.

So this is not an insignificant win I think this is a candidate who had the right message at the very right time for the right district. She also um she she ran that ad about her own abortion but she also just to show some of the print material obviously in a state ledger race you're mostly doing mailers you're mostly doing that kind of thing people aren't up on the air a lot but she talked about abortion a lot I mean she she really wanted to center a center abortion and again it that feels counterintuitive but it seems to me to say something about where at least this portion of the state is on this on this issue.

Well again it is one of those situations where that area yes has a highly educated population but when the legislature drew that history in 2020 they drew it to be a Republican district remember this is an area an area of the state that gave us magamo books for year after year after year so this is not an insignificant win I think this is a candidate who had the right message at the very right time for the right district.