The Bulwark Podcast

Then he wrote his first book, a memoir about the craziness that is his life called A Higher Loyalty, Truth, Lies and Leadership.

Running Against the Devil.

Right. First of all, I should say the piece is much of it comes from a chapter in my book, which is called Autocracy Inc and is published in July. You know, all the details are there for that reason.

You can preorder right now.

Preorder from the Penguin Random House website.

In my book, Democracy in Black, I introduced this phrase, this concept called the value gap that behind the achievement gap and the empathy gap is something much more fundamental.

And that is this belief, this practice that some people, because of the color of their skin ought to be valued more than others.

And that valuation Tim evidences itself in our political, social and economic arrangements.

I gotta tell you, I just read for the first time last year, shame on me, but just so I was interested to have this conversation, The Souls of Black Folks.

I just read it for the first time last summer.

Partially shame on me, but also shame on my fucking Jesuit school teachers.

It just gave me such a much more three-dimensional view of that struggle.

You know, like reading about it in real time, like first person, you know, about just like the nature of like the different strategies, the different, like what Frederick Douglass or Booker T. Washington, like with somebody who like was looking up to that, you know what I mean?

Baldwin has this wonderful line in Many Thousands Gone.

He says, and I'm paraphrasing him here.

He says, oftentimes we have to wash our faces blank in order to wash away your guilt.

That the precondition for my entree into your spaces is that I have to leave the particularity of who I am at the door.

That's the only way I can get in.

Did you read the Jonathan Karl piece on this? This was an excerpt from Jonathan Karl's book. We'll put this in the show notes too.

Johnny McEntee was like 29 or something at the time, like wrote a memo to Trump about how he can remove cabinet secretaries.

And like that memo was one of the things that sparked the removal of Mark Esper and other officials who weren't involved on board with the coup.

She's out with a new book, Kingdom of Rage, the Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace.

The subtitle of this was The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace.

I kind of felt like the obligation to the Christian community is the same. We need to be very clear that our faith does not justify violence.

And that's kind of the driver behind the book is I wanted to help my community understand how we got here because so many people were puzzled.

I think the other thing the community broader, this Christians as well as non-Christians need to just be able to say like, we can disagree and we can disagree vehemently. Violence is not the answer. Period. Hard stop.

He had a book out, GOP 2.0.

I think we almost all agree on that. But I think the problem that we face is folks feel like we're victims of gravity, and our best chance to win is to get Donald Trump there.

I'm confident in conservative policies. I'm confident that in this election cycle, we could walk into most moderates and independents' houses and talk to them about conservative strategies around budgeting and foreign policy and border control and all of these ideas that are really, really big ideas.

Donald Trump has hijacked our tone so bad and just turned people into, unfortunately, paper tigers, social media warriors, and they're just full of you-know-what and vinegar when they sit around the water cooler.

I want America to get addicted again to conservative policies, but not this just visceral, vile approach to it.

I remember when I met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. I'm sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants. I've been a children's pastor, after all.

As soon as this was brought to my attention, um, I certainly made some changes and looked at this passage and I've met with many, many world leaders. I've traveled around the world. As soon as it was brought to my attention we went forward and have made some edits so I'm glad that this book is being released in a couple of days and that those edits will be in place and that people will will have the updated version.

No, I've met with many, many world leaders. Many world leaders. I traveled around the world. I think I've talked extensively in this book about my time serving in Congress, my time as governor, before governor, some of the travels that I've had. Um, I'm not going to talk about my specific meetings with world leaders. I'm just not going to do that. Uh, this anecdote shouldn't have been in the book and as soon as it was brought to my attention, I made sure that that was adjusted.

Go back to Plato, the Republic Book One, what is justice? Justice is fucking your enemies and helping your friends, right? That's David Pecker's motives.

I mean, for a long period of time, my first book, My Vanishing Country, I kind of give the flowers to black women and them being the backbone of the Democratic Party.

One thing that your listeners may not be aware of, at least if they don't travel in the evangelical world, there's an insight from a very good historian at Calvin University that I think has been on the podcast before Kristen DeMay.

And she wrote a book called Jesus and John Wayne.

And so she went through and she analyzed, studied the evangelical movement throughout the 20th century.

And basically what she discovers is what she argues is that in many ways Donald Trump was a personification of something that they were looking for, sort of perfect fighting machine.

And I think the answer is the grievances and resentments and anger or just pulsating on the American right.

And his latest book, "The Age of Grievance" will be released next Tuesday.

And I think that's that's the whole game for America.

We're at this moment in American life and our political discourse, our civic discourse, where people seem to believe if I can shout louder and use a more overwrought, damning vocabulary than the people on the other side, that's how I win the day.

And I think that you see that everywhere.

I don't remember what did you have a suggestion on this topic?

You quote my predecessor Charlie Sykes quite a bit at length because he wrote a book in 1993 called "Nation of Victims."

All right, we're back with Tom Mauser, author of "Walking in Daniel's Shoes", a father's journey through controversy, activism, and healing following his son's death at Columbine.

Author of Electable, Why America Hasn't Put a Woman in the White House Yet.

Well, Tim, this is my first time on the pod, but I'm definitely coming back because you just said I was your favorite of all the people you ever have done television with. Is that what I heard correctly?

Look, when it comes to Kamala Harris, I think that and I write this in the book, like she is subject to both the fair and unfair. Her allies would tell you that most of it is unfair. Her critics would tell you that all of it's fair. I actually fall somewhere in the middle right alongside of you, which is that as a politician, you got a deal in the world that you live in and you can't wave a magic wand and make people not still fall prey to misogyny and racism.

And I again write this in the book, is like vice presidents are not supposed to overshadow the boss.

And I put that with an asterisk because like, I don't know if we're getting debates this time. But if we do, what an opportunity because we watched what she did with former Vice President Mike Pence, although the fly certainly played its own role too.

Sanger's just published book, "New Cold Wars."

The core argument of "New Cold Wars" is that for the past 30 years we were living in a delusion. It was a delusion we created for ourselves after the fall of the Berlin Wall and during that unipower moment for the United States when looked like no one could touch us.

I think the answer is pretty easy. I think we have to be more fearful of a weak China because that's the one that's more likely to lash out. A strong China is more likely to feel confident about its future.

The book if anything is a warning that we have to begin to develop a serious strategy that will last us 10 or 20 or 30 years to deal with that.

This book is called "New Cold Wars" with an s like that. We might get nuked.

I'm reading David Sanger's books when I have him on the pod, hopefully in the next few weeks.

all of that goblet book is garbage