A Step-by-Step Guide to Becoming a Trump Enabler

​​“What would you do for your relevance?” the political journalist Mark Leibovich asks in his new book, “Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission.” “How badly did you want into the clubhouse, no matter how wretched it became inside?” For Leibovich, you can’t truly understand the current Republican Party without taking stock of the almost Shakespearean drama that unfolded during the Trump presidency — in which Republican after Republican bowed to the will of their ascendant party leader. Through his extensive — and often quite colorful — reporting with Trump’s inner circle of enablers, Leibovich tries to understand the motivations that fueled Trump’s takeover of the G. O. P. But this conversation isn’t only important in retrospect. With the Republican Party poised to possibly recapture at least one house of Congress in November, many of Trump’s core enablers could soon hold considerable political power. Who are they? What do they believe? How will they act if given power? We discuss why the stakes in 2022 midterms feel higher than ever, why the Republican Party has changed so profoundly since the days of Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor, how the governing structure of the G. O. P. fell apart as Trump rose in influence, the many reasons politicians from Lindsey Graham to Elise Stefanik converted from Trump skeptics to staunch Trump defenders, the political motivations of Kevin McCarthy — who may become the next speaker of the House — and how he might wield power, how the persistence of Trumpism could profoundly alter American democracy, why Leibovich believes figures like J. D. Vance prostrated themselves to a man who insulted them, what options Democrats have for countering election denialism and more. Mentioned: “Donald Trump Is Not Going Anywhere” by Mark Leibovich Book recommendations: Why We Did It by Tim Miller Confidence Man by Maggie Haberman NSFW by Isabel Kaplan Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld, Sonia Herrero and Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Ezra Klein?

  I'm Ezra Klein. This is the Ezra Klein Show.

• 0:23Ezra Klein?

  America has a two-party system. And if you go by the language we use, we've had the same two-party system since the mid-1800s. Republicans and Democrats. That is the essential, unchanging competition that defines American politics. But the stability of that language obscures really big upheavals in what those parties are. Democrats were once the party of racist hierarchy. Later, they became the party of civil rights and Barack Obama. Republicans were once the party of Abraham Lincoln. Later, they became the party of reaction and Jesse Helms. But you don't just have to look on the timescale of centuries. This, what we are in right now, has been an era of profound party change.

• 1:06Ezra Klein?

  The Republican Party of George W. Bush is not the Republican Party of Donald Trump. Hell, the Republican Party of Paul Ryan, which existed during the Republican Party of Donald Trump, is not the Republican Party of Donald Trump. If Republicans win in 2022, and even more so in 2024, the Republican Party that will take power then will be different than the one that took power in 2017. That was a party in uneasy coalition with Donald Trump and the forces he represented and channeled. Now Donald Trump is the establishment of the Republican Party. He is its power broker. He is its center. Power in the party flows from his favor. If many Republicans, I think probably most elected Republicans in 2017,

• 1:50Ezra Klein?

  wanted to use Donald Trump to their ends, in 2022, they're eager to be used by him for his ends. What does it mean for that party to win power? What even is that party? This year, 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. It is about why they did it and how they justified it, and how they came, in many cases, to enjoy it, to love it, to be proud of it. And so what Leibovich ends up tracking with really extraordinary access to some of these key players and politicians

• 2:35Ezra Klein?

  is the way the Republican Party changed in the era of Trump through the eyes of individual Republicans who were changing. So what does that tell us about what this Republican Party will be if it is in charge of Congress next year and the White House a couple of years after that? As always, my email for guest suggestions, for feedback, for recommendations of things we should read or listen to or watch, [email protected].

• 3:04Ezra Klein?

  Mark Leibovich, welcome to the show.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Ezra, great to be with you.

• 3:09Ezra Klein?

  So tell me how the Republican Party that might win the midterms in 2022 is different than the one that won the midterms in 2010.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  I think it's different because the stakes are higher. I think it's different because we're at a next degree. I mean, Donald Trump has basically rewritten the sort of script of kind of nihilistic behavior within the Republican Party. It's not too much to say now that democracy is somewhat on the ballot and things like peaceful transfers of power and majority rule and rule of law are all things that have been thrown into some turmoil over the last few years and by the Trump era. And it's so bizarre to say, but in 2010, what were we talking about? I mean, the weird, whatever the Tea Party represented, it was kind of ephemeral. There was anger at Obamacare. I mean, that at least was a policy proposition.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  So now it feels much more foundational.

• 4:08Ezra Klein?

  Does the Republican Party believe different things or have a different vision for the country today than it did then?

• 4:14Speaker 01

  It's hard to say what their vision for the country is now, except for, I mean, you could sort of put a large blanket around the two and say they were both driven by self perpetuation and fear, whether it was of getting primaried by, you know, Tea Party candidate X in 2010, or getting attacked by Donald Trump and winding up on the wrong side of him and on the wrong side of a Republican primary that was going to put you out of work. But I think to some degree, I don't, even looking back, don't remember any great sort of policy imperative, other than the kind of reflexive tax cuts or kill Obamacare, which I don't even know they were sincere about then. Now, I, you know, I don't think

• 4:56Speaker 01

  there's any policy framework at all to what they're doing, except for the cult of personality around Trump, the fear of winding up on the wrong side of that cult, if you want to call it that, and what have you. But no, I just think it's gone from one flavor of nihilism to the next.

• 5:13Ezra Klein?

  That's interesting. Let me, let me try to push you on this. So when I think of the Republican Party that I covered in 2010, it's around the time that Paul Ryan is beginning to rise up. He's got, he's got these really intense budgets. And I remember being one of the early people to cover those budgets. And my argument about them and why they're worth taking seriously is here's a Republican finally saying and putting to paper with a lot of magic asterisks and bad budget math, but still, what they really believe and what they want to do. They, you know, they want to balance a budget on the backs of the poor in a really profound way. They not just want to repeal Obamacare, they want to privatize Medicare and, you know, cut Medicaid to the bone. And Ryan, previously to that, had been a big advocate of privatizing Social Security. Ryan, a couple of years later, of course,

• 5:58Ezra Klein?

  becomes vice presidential candidate and nominee, and then Speaker. And so there was a sense to me that the Republican Party was this very extreme policy coalition, that they had policies that were unbelievably unpopular, and they tried very hard to figure out how to either not talk about them, or muddy up what it was they were talking about. But they believed in something.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:24Ezra Klein?

  And now I think it's almost the reverse, that they... Believe in really nothing policy wise. Some of them will still make Ryan like sounds if you read, you know, some of the random budgets that various conservative backed ventures will put out today.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:37Ezra Klein?

  But that the party seems animated much more by a sense of resentment, a will to power, a fear that, you know, the people who have captured the commanding heights of American society under the banner of wokeness are going to annihilate them. And whatever policy they ever believed in has more or less collapsed. That sort of whatever you have to say to win that power is, is just fine. So they've become in a weird way, less extreme on policy, but much more extreme in the, the threat or their views on the fundamental political system they're part of.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  You might be challenging me, but I basically agree with you 100%. So I, I mean, I would agree. I mean, I think Paul Ryan was criticized a great deal. He was dismissed as a lightweight. You know, I've been criticized over the years for taking him, I think more seriously than many people in, in the media did. At least there was a policy framework around that. I think it sort of started chipping away fairly early on after 2010. I think if you look at when some of the early Tea Party members of Congress sort of were forcing John Boehner into, you know, the debt ceiling gamesmanship. I mean, that to me was a brute force tactic against not so much Obamacare or the debt

• 7:55Speaker 01

  ceiling per se, but just as a way to mess with the incumbent president. And then when you sort of jump ahead a few years, Mitch McConnell blockading Merrick Garland's nomination, that was the same sort of bizarre, you know, kind of dramatic busting of norms, which became sort of a sign of blunt force that usurped any kind of policy.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  Proposition whatsoever. It was about keeping the government closed or sort of holding Obama hostage. It was about basically stealing a Supreme Court seat. And then Trump was that sort of blunt force expression of a candidate of politics in general. And again, like any policy underpinning whatsoever kind of got lost. Now, yes, I would say their big policy victory was tax reform or tax, whatever, whatever, whatever the neutral way of saying it was. It turned out to be not that popular. You know, it blew up the budget. But, you know, at least Paul Ryan had that box checked before he retired. Now, you know, again, four years out from that, there is nothing. It is just nothing

• 9:04Speaker 01

  but brute force. And instead of social security being at risk or Obamacare being at risk, it's again peaceful transfers of power, democratic elections being at risk. And, you know, again, things that I still find myself struggling to get my head around. So, yeah, I agree. I just think that we've seen this erosion over time that keeps getting scarier and scarier.

• 9:28Ezra Klein?

  It sometimes seems to me that the stability in the names of the parties belies how much is going on here. I mean, it was called the Republican Party then. It's called the Republican Party now. But, but I want to ask you about a contrast here. You go back to take, let's, let's use 2010 as our example. And you look at who are the leaders of the Democratic Party? You have Barack Obama, you have Joe Biden, you have Nancy Pelosi in the House, you have Steny Hoyer as her deputy, you have in the Senate, Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer. And, you know, Harry Reid has died, but there's been a tremendous amount of stability in the leadership of the Democratic Party. Now Bernie Sanders rose up, AOC rose up. But

• 10:07Ezra Klein?

  in terms of who still has institutional power today, it is held almost eerily steadily. I mean, the, the level of stability in the House Democratic Caucus is weird. And then you look at the Republican Party in that period and who are the leaders who are about to be the leaders. So I think John Boehner, Paul Ryan is rising, you know, you have the Bushes maybe, the Chaney's maybe, John McCain was just the nominee, Mitt Romney will be the next nominee, Mitch McConnell. And with the only possible exception of McConnell, who I think is viewed with at least some suspicion, every one of these others is now something like a heretic within the party. Tell me about just the collapse of the relationship between the entire leadership

• 10:49Ezra Klein?

  class of the Republican Party circa 2010 and today.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, McCarthy became whip after that election and he didn't really stand for anything then. He doesn't stand for anything now, except again, just survival, kind of being in the frame, being in the young guns back in that period and now being on the right side of Trump and hoping that he can still be someone who can work with him. But you're right. I think Trump himself has, not only did he just sort of storm the gates and get the nomination and then win the presidency, but the seed corner of the Republican Party have been this cast of somewhat outlandish, but in many cases, very effective imitators of him, whether it's Ron DeSantis, or then even far downstream, you have, if Dr. Oz

• 11:36Speaker 01

  or Herschel Walker or Marjorie Taylor Greene are ascendant. So, yes, I mean, these are all people who sort of came from the completely dramatic reinvention that Trump imposed on the party in 2016. I don't think the Democrats' problem right now is the lack of new or fresh blood, to be honest with you. And I don't think the Republicans' problem right now is the lack of or need for new or fresh blood. I think the personalities themselves have sort of written this story and the tension is, it is what it is. Yeah, I think it would be wonderful if Biden didn't run again. I think it would be wonderful if Pelosi retired. I think it would be wonderful personally if Democrats keep the Senate and someone like

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Tim Ryan or John Fetterman or Mandela Barnes or Val Demings or someone like could all of a sudden become a national figure. But again, I mean, that's why these elections are so consequential in addition to everything else.

• 12:35Ezra Klein?

  See, you wrote this book that is, I think, distinctive in the Trump literature because it's not really about Trump. It's about all the people in the party who bend the knee to him and what their individual and collective rationalizations for doing it are. Why focus there? Tell me about the genesis of the project.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  I thought it was an untold story. I didn't want to try to out Woodward, Bob Woodward, or out Maggie, Maggie Haberman. I mean, God bless them both, but I didn't, you know, I didn't feel like I had anything to add to the story of who Donald Trump is, what kind of White House intrigue happened, what happened around January 6th, who are the Trump supporters out in Ohio that we didn't understand and so forth. No, I wanted to sort of keep pounding home the message that it is the Kevin McCarthy's and the Lindsey Graham's and the Marco Rubio's and the Mitch McConnell's and to some degree the Paul Ryan's and the Mike Pence's that allowed him to happen and continue to allow him to happen.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  I mean, it is an astounding thing to me that Donald Trump survived everything he survived, but even after January 6th, because, you know, we all remember the time when it seemed like he, this story finally had ended or was winding down, and he continues to be propped up. And I wanted to write a book about what Washington was like and what these years were like through the experience of the enablers and what was the psychology behind the Lindsey Graham's and the Kevin McCarthy's of the world that allowed them to make the deals they did, to live with themselves the way they did. And bizarrely, you know, they mostly talked to me and were pretty transparent in ways that I didn't expect.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  But again, I think that the story is much broader than Trump. I think the story is what has happened to the Republican Party and the people who have continued to allow this to happen because I think that, you know, this is a uniquely dangerous time we're living through.

• 14:56Ezra Klein?

  So when I was reading the book, I began thinking about this taxonomy of the way people justified working for Trump. I think it'd be helpful to go through it in some version of this and talk about the individuals as exemplars, because behind each one person you profile, there are, you know, 30, 50, 100, who are doing the same thing in a less obvious way.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Less egregious way, yeah.

• 15:18Ezra Klein?

  So five categories dominated for me. I want to run them by you and then we can kind of go through them or through them with any modifications you want to make. So to me, I could see that there were people who understood themselves early on as kind of martyrs, right? They're there heroically, working in this clown house to prevent terrible things from happening. There are pragmatists who see themselves as making a transaction with Donald Trump to pass tax cuts or get Supreme Court nominees, or whatever it might be. There are climbers who attach to Donald Trump to further their own career. There are, I don't know how to put this, like democratic accommodationists, you know, people who take the view that whatever

• 16:00Ezra Klein?

  you say, you know, I represent these Republican voters, Donald Trump clearly represents them better than I do. They like him more than they like me. So as a representative, it's on me to accommodate this, to try to see what he's seeing and voice it as best I can. And then, of course, there are real believers. First, does that feel like a kind of fair breakdown?

• 16:23Speaker 01

  It does. There definitely are true believers, okay? And then, what was the fourth one? Because the fourth one made me like-

• 16:28Ezra Klein?

  Accommodationists.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Accommodationists. Yeah, I mean-

• 16:31Ezra Klein?

  The people who are not saying exactly that they believe in him-

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:34Ezra Klein?

  But it's a lot of- Well, you can't deny that he has picked up something about the country and you can't deny that my voters are out there yelling at me, telling me that he's right and he's our president. And I do represent them in a representative democracy and so.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Right. No, correct. I mean, that is a, that's a big, I mean, they're all, there's a lot of overlap between all these categories. That is a big one. And what I find truly offensive about that category is that it completely forecloses any possibility of leadership. Now, on the same time, you would say, okay, so Liz Cheney has demonstrated leadership by speaking her truth, speaking, you know, what I think is an objective truth about, you know, what happened January 6th, what happened with the election and so forth, and she will no longer have a seat in Congress, you know, in a few months. So, you know, maybe she wasn't pragmatic enough. You know, I would start from a lot of overlap here. I mean, start from a position that virtually

• 17:26Speaker 01

  everyone, except for category five, the true believers, has serious, serious ambivalence at best, contempt at worst for this person and did from the start. Now, a lot of this is on the record from Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and Paul Ryan and so forth back from 2016. You know, Paul Ryan is an interesting category because he's, he wasn't necessarily a climber because he became speaker before Trump was nominated. He, I think, probably was a little too ostentatious in talking about, oh, I never wanted this job. I just want to be chairman of Ways and Means. I don't want to be speaker. And so he was speaker. Anyway, he was, but he did not use Trump to make him speaker. But, you know,

• 18:09Speaker 01

  from a policy position, he did, tax cuts and deregulation were two of his, you know, real cherished babies over the years. And he did get them by way of Trump, right?

• 18:18Ezra Klein?

  Well, let's talk about him. And so to me, and you can tell me if you think this is wrong, let's start with the pragmatist category because I think that was a pretty big one.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:25Ezra Klein?

  A lot of people didn't think Trump was going to win the election, including among the Republicans, then he does. They are there in Washington presumably to do something.

• 18:35Ezra Klein?

  Politics is a transactional business. And I think the calculation many of them make, and I think a lot of them think that calculation came out pretty well in the end. I mean, Paul Ryan tells you in the book, he would do it all over again, the same way. Is it, you know, if I work with this guy and I defend this guy when he needs defending and I tell reporters, I'm late for lunch when they're asking me about his latest tweet. I can get these tax cuts passed. I can get, you know, maybe Obamacare appealed, it doesn't work out, but Donald Trump would have signed it. I can get Supreme Court nominees appointed, which they do, and that has had really profound reverberations across American society and, you know, made good on very long time promises to, to the right wing of the party.

• 19:17Ezra Klein?

  So I think you have this world of the pragmatists, who it's not that they're exactly pro-Trump, but they're pro-using their power. And to use their power, they have to go into alliance with this guy. And Paul Ryan strikes me as a very, very good example of that, but so too does Mitch McConnell.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think Mitch McConnell is almost better. I mean, you know, McConnell is still putting up with the day-to-day grief, whereas, you know, Ryan is, you know, sitting on boards, including the Fox News board and, you know, still claiming to be sort of an adult. But no, you're right. I mean, they, and, you know, when I was writing about Ryan, I remember in, in 2018, I mean, he kept throwing the counterfactual back in my face, which was, all right, so I could just pick a fight with him every day and we would be at war and we would get absolutely nothing done. And now because, you know, I've sort of worked it this way, we have our tax cut, right? And so there is that. I mean, I think there's another piece of Ryan where he was a big proponent, you had a lot of White House people saying this, where they said, you know, it would have

• 20:14Speaker 01

  been so much worse without me, without like what I did here. I was an adult in the room.

• 20:20Ezra Klein?

  Yeah, these are the martyrs.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  These are the martyrs. And look, I, I have been dismissive and even disdainful of that sort of line of thinking and that rap for a number of years. However, if I'm being honest, people who even at extremely late times, whether you're Mike Pence or Bill Barr. Being an adult in the room, you know, again, it may have been way, way, way late and it might have been the bare minimum, probably were forces for good. Now, does it justify everything to that point? No, absolutely not. But, you know, I don't want to be too glib to say that, you know, there's no place for an adult in the room. That's just a rationalization. Or there's no place for a Paul Ryan being a pragmatist. So you can get your deregulation

• 21:04Speaker 01

  and get your tax cuts and so forth. Because, yeah, I mean, I think it's a perfectly legitimate argument in the other direction. So I think in the large sort of sweep of time, I've come to appreciate that perspective maybe more than I had as it was happening.

• 21:21Ezra Klein?

  Tell me a bit about how you understand the way Mitch McConnell sees American politics at this point. What is, as best you can channel it, Mitch McConnell's view of what's going on here?

• 21:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, look, he's very shrewd. He's, I mean, people say he's a strategic genius. He's very disciplined. All of that is true. I don't think he has any sense of where this was headed. I don't think he has control of the situation. Look, I mean, he got his three Supreme Court judges and a whole bunch of other appeals court judges. And I mean, that was, he would say, his baby, that and keeping the majority. And, look, he's got a decent shot of getting the majority back in a few weeks. And if that happens and he's elected majority leader, which I assume he will be, he will have won. He will have defeated the Democrats and he will have ostensibly defeated Trump because Trump, you know, at

• 22:16Speaker 01

  least in 2023, will not have deposed him. And, you know, then we would have 2025 to look forward to if McConnell's still in that chair and Trump somehow gets elected and comes back to the White House. But, no, look, I think McConnell has made the most of an extremely untenable situation. And, look, he's 80 years old. I mean, he's like in the exact same cohort as the whole group that you mentioned before. Hoyer, Clyburn, Pelosi, Biden, I mean, go down the list. And

• 22:50Speaker 01

  You know, after a while, it just sort of becomes a how long can you race the clock until someone tells you you can't come anymore? So my guess is, and I haven't talked to him in a long time, that he is just, you know, he's just playing it out and hoping to just sort of be in the chair for as long as possible. And that's really all that it matters to him.

• 23:09Ezra Klein?

  Within the pragmatist subcategory here, I think it's interesting to contrast Ryan and McConnell as two different weird species. I don't think Paul Ryan's decision to resign from Congress and the speakership is some kind of honorable decision. And then to go sit on the Fox News board, you're definitely not outside of what is corseting American politics when you're getting paid off of Tucker Carlson's, you know, checks and fame. But Ryan clearly makes a decision that he doesn't want to be here being the face of this thing anymore, and he's going to leave. And McConnell makes a decision that he might not like a lot of this thing, but he's going to stay and try to wield his power as best he can. And what neither of them make the decision to do, and this includes around things like

• 23:54Ezra Klein?

  January 6, you know, the Capitol being actually invaded while they are there, you know, while their colleagues are there, while Donald Trump cheers it on. What neither of them at any point decide to do is fight, is to actually say in any real way, like, yeah, like, this shouldn't happen, you know, like, I'm willing to go here but not further. I think if you had described the situation to both of them in 2006, right, just a hypothetical situation to these people who love to call themselves constitutional conservatives, they would have told you that in that case, of course, I will be a profile in courage.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:30Ezra Klein?

  And actually, maybe it wouldn't even take that much courage because, I mean, this is such a weirdly outrageous example you're giving me. Like, give me a hard hypothetical here.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 24:40Ezra Klein?

  Why don't they ever try to fight? Why is there not a point of, okay, I am in my late 70s here. I don't just want to quietly resign. I don't just want to accommodate myself to it. I want to make sure that I'm not somebody understood as having, you know... Traded tax cuts and Supreme Court nominations to help erode the very foundations of the country and the political system that at least I claim to love.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  Great question. I mean, it's a question we from the outside have been asking for years now. Like, is it really worth it? Is the indignity that you are demonstrating really worth it? Is the job really that, you know, you can't really envision yourself without the job. Is it, can you, is it just like that unthinkable to be tweeted about by Donald Trump in a disparaging way? You know, when I reported the book and I had these conversations with people, one of the more depressing things I realized was that it was not a sort of decision of virtue or a decision of, I mean, there was certainly

• 25:50Speaker 01

  pragmatism, but it was not a decision of principle or character. A lot of the time it was just abject fear. And sometimes, I mean, and I mean that literally sometimes. I think people sort of talk abstractly about, oh, yeah, well, so and so is getting death threats and so forth. I mean, there is a whole lot of testimony out there now from people who said, yes, I wanted to do this. I wanted to say this. I wanted to vote a certain way, but I was worried about my family. And, you know, yes, I mean, a lot of them just walked away. I mean, Paul Ryan walked away. He didn't really fight. I do think people, I mean, Republicans love to point to Liz Cheney is like, oh, well, she'll be irrelevant soon because she'll be out of a job or look at Jeff Flake. Where is

• 26:33Speaker 01

  he now? And Paul and McCarthy was always saying to me when I sort of put this question to him, you know, where's the statue to Jeff Flake in the, in the Senate or in the House, right? I mean,

• 26:43Ezra Klein?

  He would actually say that to you?

• 26:45Speaker 01

  He did. He said it explicitly.

• 26:46Ezra Klein?

  Oh, my God.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  He basically said, he said, oh, yeah, the Jeff Flake thing. Like, I would ask him and I would ask Graham this and I asked them all variations on the, do you worry how history will remember you question or how, you know, your grandchildren think about you if they ever read about you? And they would all just sort of, Shake their heads and roll their eyes and McCarthy would say, oh, yeah, yeah. The Jeff Flake thing. And I said, what do you mean the Jeff Flake thing? Well, you know, Jeff Flake, like, where's his statue? Like, OK, he was principled and now, like, where is he now? Like Biden's ambassador to Austria? Who's going to remember him? And so extremely dismissive. And again, it's part of the same nihilism, right? I mean, it's anti-history, it's anti-character, it's anti-patriotism. It's just doing everything for self-preservation and fear.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  So again, I mean, none of this is flattering at all. But unfortunately, it is a pervasive reality of how these people are thinking when they decide to just sort of go along and get along. And it's stunning to me. It is absolutely stunning to me from a point of view of pride or principle or character, whatever big words you want to throw out there. But it happens every day. I mean, there was a, I guess there was a moment in, was it the Republican debate? Or the Senate debate in Ohio the other day when Tim Ryan sort of went after JD Vance for just like having no pride. And Trump said, you know, JD's been kissing my ass. He wants my support so bad. And Ryan sort of said, you know, you just went right up there

• 28:15Speaker 01

  and you just continued to do it because that's what you needed to do. And, you know, how could you do that? Like, in my world, and, you know, he's probably channeling a diverse or a kind of macho Ohio football clique kind of sensibility of manhood or something. But, but, you know, the point is the same, which is that is the job really that important? Are you really so scared of this guy that you know, or I'm pretty sure you have not a lot of respect for privately? Because again, I don't think most of them do. But again, it's a really, really depressing window into the character or lack thereof of a lot of the people who are our putative leaders now and could be running the country again in a few months.

• 28:56Ezra Klein?

  Let me take a quick detour into JD Vance and then I want to talk about Kevin McCarthy. So JD Vance, Senate candidate from Ohio, a Peter Thiel protege, the author of a Hillbilly Elegy, which is a sort of book on Appalachian whites, which if you read Hillbilly Elegy, it is very much about how that area of the country is responsible for its own problems. It's a very strange book, given what his career becomes, because it's a... It is not a fan of systemic analysis. It sort of takes like the old cultural pathology arguments that used to be used on black communities and applies them to white communities and then Vance flips and becomes kind of a systemic guy. Right. Sort of says, you know, you're all against my, my friends here.

• 29:39Ezra Klein?

  You know, I interviewed Vance in those periods, know him a little bit. A lot of people know him. He was a very, very anti-Trump guy, you know, a guy who was a sort of very preening moralistic guy, you know, very into civility and the way we treat one another and, you know, healing the country. And at some point he talks about whether or not Trump is going to be our Hitler. Hmm. And what always strikes me about him, and I've reached out to him, you don't get an answer when you do that. He's actually said in interviews, which I just find so weird. He's like, you know, David Brooks and Ezra Klein, where these people used to be able to talk to, and then they really changed in the Trump era. And it's such a weird psychology because, yeah, I had to change it all. I believed what I believed about Trump in 2016 and 2020.

• 30:24Ezra Klein?

  I believed what J.D. Vance believed about Donald Trump in 2016. Right. And J.D. Vance doesn't believe that in 2022. There is something about the ability to rationalize out your own sense of self. I'm not a big fan of how will history judge you. I think the people who say that is a kind of a secular yearning for divine punishment are basically right about it. But I do think about the question of how do you judge yourself? And I don't think these are folks without a sense of self-awareness. And I can understand how you rationalize certain versions of this, how you're angry at, you know, how you become an anti, anti-Trumper or something. But something like the J.D.

• 31:06Ezra Klein?

  Vance pivot to full asciser and full culture warrior and to totally overhaul your own personality into this just-

• 31:16Ezra Klein?

  Flooded gash of resentment. I sort of don't understand how you maintain any stability in your self conception. And you watched a bunch of people do this. I mean, Lindsey Graham, someone we'll talk about. And I'm curious what you think of that, because that strikes me as the hard thing to get over.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  It does. And the examples, as you said, are legion. I mean, Cruz, Rubio, I mean, yeah, everyone who basically ran against him in 16 and

• 31:41Ezra Klein?

  You have a very funny section in the book of all these people calling Donald Trump a cancer.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, cancer.

• 31:46Ezra Klein?

  As you say, it's very, it's very brave how they all learned to live with cancer.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. Now, they're, yeah, cancer is love. They love that metaphor. But yeah, yeah, they're cancer survivors, right? No, you're right. And, and I do agree with you. I mean, I do think the verdict of history thing is, is a cliche. And, you know, they, in some ways, they have sort of assumed the Trump lesson of rationalization, projection in some ways, because, you know, Ezra Klein and David Brooks changed. I mean, that's classic projection, right? Coming from J D Vance. I don't think I could do it. I honestly don't. I mean, I don't think being a senator from Ohio would be worth it. But again, I've never been in front of a crowd with Donald Trump before. I've never been

• 32:30Speaker 01

  offered a job like that powerful, that visible, like before a crowd that big. Maybe there's something there, or maybe there's something just so terrifying about being denied that, or something so magical about the spell of Donald Trump. And I'm, I don't think so. I mean, I spent way more time than I would have wanted to, like in late 15 for a magazine profile of, of him. And I didn't get it. But I mean, maybe it does exist, because some people do. I do think, though, if you look at the profile of the educated voter and how they typically feel about Trump, whether they go to Harvard or Yale, or wherever J

• 33:10Speaker 01

  D Vance or Josh Hawley or Ted Cruz went, it's a real, real reach to think that they are able to sort of suspend disbelief, or self criticism, or self assessment to the degree that they do, without just play acting and knowing that they're play acting. But again, it's depressing. I also think it's Just worth condemnation at the highest levels. I mean, I cannot tell you the level of contempt I still have for many of these folks like that are far greater in some ways for like Donald Trump himself because I don't know, I think he's his own kind of pathology and it's sort of a standalone thing. But yeah, no, I mean, unfortunately, that dynamic is what is propelling the Republican Party right now.

• 33:55Ezra Klein?

  If you look at the polls, you look at the forecasts, Kevin McCarthy is likely to be speaker after the election than McConnell is to be Senate Majority Leader, which isn't to say they both won't get their hopeful jobs. But tell me about Kevin McCarthy. How should somebody who doesn't know that much about him, understand what he is, what he wants, what kind of House Speaker he'd be?

• 34:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think he'll be a very good House Speaker. I think he would be, I think it would be a miserable experience for him. But I also think that sort of backing up, he's a very personable guy. He's, you know, if you're someone who can play the game of sitting down and having dinner and gossiping about politics and talking about sports and talking about Washington and do you know this person, do you know that person? I mean, he's a thoroughly kind of backslapery kind of Paul to have dinner with. He's not, I don't think that's smart, but I don't think he's that principled. I think he is more starstruck than anything else. I mean, I had dinner with him a couple of times in Bakersfield, his district, and you know, he just spent a lot of it just sort of showing me pictures

• 34:58Speaker 01

  of himself with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Donald Trump, you know, Gavin Newsom, I mean, anyone, you know, Kobe Bryant, I mean, anyone famous that he's got, he's got this full iPhone of, hey, get a load of me and this person and that person. And look, we're on Air Force One and we're with Jerry Brown here and Paul Ryan was in town and Arnold was, I mean, it's just, it was like being with a 15 year old like at a-

• 35:20Ezra Klein?

  He's actually showing these to a reporter?

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, he is. Yeah, we're just like showing me across the table and he wouldn't. And, you know, I'd be asking him pretty serious questions about like January 6th and stuff. And he'd be scrolling through his phone and I thought, you know, maybe he was getting- Urgent text messages or something, but then he'd flip the phone around and say, yeah, here is me and my high school buddies. This guy is the assistant football coach at Stanford now. And oh, yeah, here's me and Trump when he came through Bakersfield. Oh, here's me and Pompeo. I mean, it really, it was, it was, and I'm always amazed at how unselfconscious people who should be that accustomed to being assessed, you know, in such a public forum, you know, can be that way. But, you know, look, he's a backslapper. He wants to be liked.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  He basically just wants to be speaker. He wants the gavel. He wants to be able to say for two probably miserable years, because he's going to be led around by the nose by the Marjorie Taylor Greene's and Jim Jordan's of the world, I suspect, and Donald Trump's of the world, I suspect, that, you know, look, he will be able to go through his entire life as a former speaker of the House and, you know, his mentor, Bill Thomas, the longtime sort of Ways and Means Chair, right, of the House, you know, he's, his mentor used to work for Thomas. Thomas has a terminal at the Bakersfield Airport named after him. Like, Terminal A is now the Bill Thomas Terminal. Now, if Kevin McCarthy gets to be Speaker,

• 36:45Speaker 01

  he might get the Bakersfield Airport. Like, that's his calculation. He's like, Bakersfield Airport could be the Kevin McCarthy Airport. And that would redeem everything. It would redeem the, the abuse he gets from Trump, the, the whatever machinations, the Freedom Caucus makes him go through, the distrust from so much of the, the base. So, look, that, that's McCarthy. He just wants the job. And, you know, if he can be Speaker of the House, it'll all be worth it in his mind.

• 37:14Ezra Klein?

  I was just thinking while you're saying that, that when I read out that list of plausible leaders of the Republican Party a couple of years back, I actually forgot somebody who was Eric Cantor. And when we talk about the young guns, it was Paul Ryan, it was Eric Cantor, and it was Kevin McCarthy. You know, they were the three up and coming Republican House members. And Cantor was the bet everybody made to be the next speaker, not Ryan, not McCarthy. And Cantor loses in this really spectacular way. Can you talk a bit about that and what effect do you think it had on McCarthy in particular? But but also possibly, because I do think of it as a bit of a forerunner to the Trump stuff, on the Republican Party and politicians more generally?

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, so Eric Cantor, like you said, I mean, he was seen to be the speaker in waiting, you know, whenever Boehner retired. And all of a sudden, I guess it was 2014, he was cruising to victory like he always did in his his Virginia district. And yeah, he gets primaried by this guy named David Brat, who was a college professor, real, you know, kind of the Tea Party or whatever the 2014 version of a Tea Party person was. Very conservative, very ideological, and somehow he upset Eric Cantor out of nowhere, which was, as you said, it was really, it was kind of a seminal moment because no one, I think that was like a real congressional primary upset. And it became kind of a cautionary tale of like, this can happen to you too if you don't

• 38:40Speaker 01

  cater to the crazies sufficiently, right? And I think McCarthy, who was actually in line to be Speaker like a year, year and a half later, you know, sort of took that as like, I will never allow myself to be defeated by the, what is now known as the base. And like, look, Cantor's rarely heard from anymore. He's in, he's in private equity. I talked to him a couple of years ago when I was writing about McCarthy. And, you know, he seems pretty depressed from the outside about what he sees. He doesn't, you know, I don't think he would say that he would be willing to do like half of what Kevin McCarthy has been willing to do to placate Trump and Trump supporters and so forth. But yeah, no, Eric Cantor is kind of a classic.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  And as you said, kind of an oft forgotten sort of figure in this in that he was the classic up and comer and speaker in waiting a decade ago. And, you know, just sort of slunk away. And McCarthy, I think, took the lesson of him and Paul Ryan and says, okay, I'm just not going to be outpandered or out, you know, outmaneuvered by anyone. I'm just going to do whatever it takes to stay on the right side of the people who can make me Speaker of the House.

• 39:49Ezra Klein?

  I think it's easy to see McCarthy as a kind of comic figure. I think he's often played that way in Washington, right? Somebody people know is going to have, has and will have a lot of power. But even the way you describe him here, not somebody people take very seriously. But I want to draw this out just a little bit because, look, I don't think Paul Ryan, as I've said, was any profound, profound courage. But House Speaker is incredibly powerful.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:12Ezra Klein?

  And he really did set the Republicans' actual agenda under Donald Trump. And then in the back half of the Trump presidency, Nancy Pelosi was Speaker. So if you imagine McCarthy becoming Speaker, you know, after the 2022 election, even after 2024, and a Trump or Trump-like figure winning in 2024, even compared to Ryan, you're talking about a much more servile Speaker.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 40:37Ezra Klein?

  And House than we saw in 2017 or 2018. And I'm curious, what effect do you think that would have? How is it meaningful for, you know, a Donald Trump or Trump-like figure to have a Kevin McCarthy as Speaker as opposed to the opposition party or even somebody with a little bit more spine in their own party?

• 40:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's extremely meaningful. I mean, if you look at, if Donald Trump were to get elected again, one, presumably, he would be term limited, so he would not have to face voters again. So that would uncheck him that much more. And also presumably, the people in power around him will be that much more accommodating. So you would have, you know, McCarthy instead of Paul Ryan. And again, I mean, Ryan wasn't a great person of backbone, but he, you know, he at least, you know, he condemned Charlottesville, he retired. Apparently, they, they had a lot of arguments in private.

• 41:32Ezra Klein?

  I mean, Ryan's big line is, you have no idea what I prevented.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  You have no idea what I prevented.

• 41:36Ezra Klein?

  And that could mean nothing, actually.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  It could mean nothing.

• 41:39Ezra Klein?

  Something.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  It could mean, at least he was a, I don't know. I don't, I don't discount that totally. But anyway, McCarthy is not going to instill fear in anybody, both in his caucus, I don't think, and certainly in the White House, if Trump is in there, or someone like Trump is in there. And, you know, unfortunately, that's sort of the tip of the iceberg. I mean, you could have Vice President Carrie Lake, right? And you'd be longing for the, the profile and backbone that was former Vice President Mike Pence, or Attorney General, I don't know.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  John Eastman, I don't know. I mean, look, I mean, I have no reason, and this is, I mean, it sounds absurd on its face, but you know, four years ago, the thought of a Capitol being stormed on January 6th would have been absurd on its face. But look, I can't think of a member of the Republican Senate outside of maybe a handful who are gonna like, say, no, this is a bridge too far. I'm gonna vote against the nomination of Attorney General Eastman, or Secretary of Defense Flynn, or Secretary of State Kushner. I don't know. I mean, like, the scenario of him getting elected, again, brings all kinds of sort of adjacent scenarios that are really hard to get your head around. But again, we've seen this sort of stair stepping of possibilities come true, and who knows what we'll be seeing

• 42:53Speaker 01

  as is possible in a couple of years.

• 42:56Ezra Klein?

  I think of McCarthy as a canonical climber, but but another person in House leadership who is sometimes even more extraordinary to me in their trajectory here is Elise Stefanic. Tell me a bit about her.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  You know, Elise Stefanic is, you know, she was, it's funny, when I was writing about Ryan in 2018, they were dying for me to talk to Elise Stefanic because she loved Paul Ryan, and she loved Liz Cheney. Like, these were her idols. These were the people she she kept talking about as people she wanted to be like. And moderate, you know, very, you know, big advocate for getting more women involved in Republican policies, condemned Trump quite a bit, went to Harvard, had, you know, had a reputation as a real, sort of a young, female, bright, moderate, who really could be the future, or a, you know, play a real role in the future of the Republican Party. And I remember she was on the first impeachment

• 43:51Speaker 01

  committee, on the Intelligence Committee. And I remember thinking, sitting in that room, you know, yeah, you had the Jim Jordans and the Louie Gomert's, and you sort of knew... What the hardcore Trumpers were going to say and what their lines were going to be. But I remember sort of looking to Elise Stefanic and thinking, you know, okay, this is where the gray matter of this committee, and so much as there is any on the Republican side, is going to be, and you know, maybe she will play a more critical role. And like on day one, her going after Adam Schiff and saying, you know, this witch hunt against Donald Trump, and I just remember my heart sinking. And look, I mean, she has gone all in. She clearly knows better. You know, she's, she's quite distrusted within her own caucus, by the way.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  I mean, most, you know, and I assume there are a lot of people who are going to sort of be competing for the same leadership positions if McCarthy's speaker. But, you know, look, Trump loves her and she's like a made woman inside MAGA world at this point. But it's extremely depressing because, you know, the journey she made from just a couple of years ago, and we're talking two or three years ago, is breathtaking. But again, I guess maybe we should stop using terms like breathtaking because it's happened over and over and over again to other people who I've been surprised by.

• 45:27Ezra Klein?

  There are obviously the politicians whom it's just very pure ambition. And for a lot of them, that's a big part of it. It's very easy to justify what your self-interest needs you to justify. But something I see sometimes with a Stefanic, with a Lindsey Graham, with a bunch of them is what I've come to think of as the anti anti-Trump ratchet. So you start out not pro-Trump, very Republican, you don't hate everything about the guy, you do think the media is unfair to him, you think they're really unfair to his supporters, who are many of your supporters. And so you pick some fights and because it's good for you to pick some fights on behalf of him when you're critical of him elsewhere, or you've been critical of him in the past, you know, you step out when you think you can.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:12Ezra Klein?

  And then you get a big reaction backwards, right? A big blowback, like, how dare you? We thought we knew you.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:19Ezra Klein?

  And every one of them has their moments in this. I think for Lindsey Graham, the Brett Kavanaugh hearings were a big moment. You know, Stefanic has hers, like, I've heard this from a bunch of people. But there's this way in which you kind of start out not exactly Trump positive, but, but, but open. And you're a Republican and you also don't really like liberals because you're not a liberal.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:40Ezra Klein?

  And something about the, like, the back and forth of stepping out for Trump a bit, then getting this blowback, then stepping out a bit more and getting this blowback. And soon your friends are totally different, your enemies are totally different, who likes you is different. And I've watched this in politicians before, that there's a psychological dynamic, and I've actually seen it in pundits, too. Like, as a psychological dynamic, this is often a pathway to a very different politics in three years. Like, you can look at a Glenn Greenwald like this, I think.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 47:07Ezra Klein?

  You, you see this a lot, this sort of, the social dynamics of odd bedfellows becoming a, a greased path towards ending up in a place that I think four years ago you could have never imagined yourself being. I'm curious how much you saw that and how you understand it operating.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  I think that's a great point. You, you see it a lot. You shouldn't underestimate the power of the bunker mentality, but, but also, yeah, I mean, you realize that your only supporters are these people now, so you sort of throw in with them. I mean, there was a, there's a passage in my book in which Adam Schiff is talking about Devin Nunes, and, and the two of them had a real, it, it sounds like a pretty authentic working relationship in, like, the early. Maybe early, mid teens, right? I mean, they were both on the Intelligence Committee. I think they were chair and ranking coach. I mean, they were both, you know, pretty high up in seniority on their respective sides. They're both in California. You know, they worked together fairly closely.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  They had a, a working, you know, relationship and Schiff, you know, spoke pretty, not nostalgically for it, but it sounded like a pretty good advertisement for, you know, the kind of productive relationship a Democrat and Republican could have. Nunes used to be considered one of the sane ones, right? Although Nunes had a few, not blind spots, but very Trumpy sort of pet interests, like around the deep state, around the FBI, around things that, that Trump had a real penis bonded about and, and Nunes like had a similar kind of aversion. And he became very, very enamored of Trump and he kind of endorsed him fairly early. But then what happened was, you know, Nunes like started doing some really weird stuff.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  He did that midnight run where he sort of was sort of had this information around the Russia investigation. He went to the White House at midnight and tried to share it with the White House before sharing with the rest of the committee. He has to recuse himself. I mean, the blowback was insane. And Schiff talked about sort of seeing him become suddenly a pariah among many of his sort of centrist Republicans, but many Democratic friends, because this was still, I mean, it sounds like a long time ago. It was seven years ago, but this was still a time when institutional respect meant something, you know, from a bipartisan perspective and so forth. And Schiff describes just this spiral that Nunes kind of went down essentially into madness

• 49:35Speaker 01

  and sort of a cultic Trumpian loyalty that turned him into the kind of hyper-Trumpist that he became at the end of his career, that he abruptly retired from Congress for and is now, I guess, last I heard, running Truth Social or something. I mean, you, you, you shouldn't underestimate the seductive power of having allies and also just sort of the trauma of, of the level of contempt that is coming back at you from people that, you know, you probably on some level have always respected and, and probably on some level know is probably right, which creates a great deal of dissonance, which in some ways hardens your loyalty to the side you're now affiliated with.

• 50:17Ezra Klein?

  And just makes you more open to their arguments. I mean, to make this argument against interests, so it doesn't just sound like something I'm saying about about Trumpists. You really see this, in my view, with the never Trumpers. So, you know, I've known people like Bill Kristol, or Jen Rubin, or a bunch of the Project Lincoln folks for a very long time. And, you know, eight years ago, we had similar views on Donald Trump and very different views on taxes.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:42Ezra Klein?

  Or Obamacare. And over time, a bunch of these folks, it's not just that they're anti-Trump, it's that they've developed views that are closer to mine on taxation, on healthcare, on other things. And I'm not against that. I want people to hold my views on domestic policy. But I do think there's an interesting dynamic where when the people who were once your allies turn on you, because they feel you've turned on them, then it's not just that, you know, you like the people who were once your, you know, your opponents, your antagonists a lot better, but but all of a sudden, you're also open to other things they say. I mean, the world is complicated. Like, the only, on some level, like, the fundamental empirical and ontological choice we make every day is simply, who do we trust?

• 51:27Ezra Klein?

  And we tend to trust people we think like us and who we like. And so it's just a very, I just think this is a very powerful and underappreciated sociopolitical dynamic.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it's true, too. I mean, I've had, I mean, first of all, it is kind of bizarre and ironic, and I would never have predicted this, but if you want to look at real profiles of courage on the right, I mean, a lot of it comes from the consultant world, or the sort of, you know, people we would have called hacks many years ago. But I've been, intellectually speaking, and I don't know if, I think you might agree with this, I've found I have had much more common cause with conservatives over the last half dozen years than I ever had before. I've read more conservative writing. And, you know, the power of The unity around norms, around democracy, around, you know, basic seriousness

• 52:20Speaker 01

  has been a very powerful thing that I think has brought the classic right and the classic left together. Now, one unfortunate symptom of what we've all been living through is I think the term conservative has been really perverted. I mean, I think, you know, now people say, oh, well, you know, the real Trumpists like Roger Stone and John Eastman or Steve Bannon, I mean, they are hyper conservatives. And like, the people who go to Trump rallies are like the real hardcore conservatives. They're not conservative. I mean, not in any classic sense. You know, they're Trumpists. And I, you know, I realize that people, I mean, the term Trumpist is kind of not all that satisfying because it basically just sort of everything associated with Trump. But, you know, again, I think

• 53:04Speaker 01

  conservatism in its purest form has had some very, very eloquent advocates over the last few years that I've sort of appreciated listening to and learning from. And I think, again, a conservatism that doesn't so much exist in the political square as it did maybe 10 years ago, I have a greater appreciation for.

• 53:24Ezra Klein?

  Let's talk a bit about the true believers, because one thing about this category, particularly inside official Republican circles, is it wasn't very big in 2017. And it is very big now. I would make the argument that in this typology, that in 2017, you were very tilted in Congress towards pragmatists, maybe some accommodationists, maybe some martyrs. And now it's much more accommodationists and true believers. So tell me a bit about the true believers. Who comes to your mind there? And what sort of Republican are they? How are they different than a Kevin McCarthy?

• 54:01Speaker 01

  Well, part of it is just numbers. I mean, I think in around 2018, 2019, David Wasserman Of, uh, was he Cook Political Report? He's a cook, right? He's the congressional expert, you know, real guru. He, um, you know, he calculated that, that about half of the Republicans who were in office in Congress in 2016 on Election Day had either been defeated, retired, or were planning to retire and not running for reelection. So basically, right there, take half of whatever the mainstream of the Republican Party in the House was in early 2017 and just sort of sweep them out. Um, the Kevin Brady's, the Mark Sanford's.

• 54:46Speaker 01

  I mean, there's just a lot of retirements. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, moderates, you know, pure conservatives and so forth. And yeah, I mean, they have been replaced by Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene. And I guess, I don't know when Paul Gosar came in, but they, they have all ascended, right? I mean, Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows before he left to go to the White House. But these were fringe figures in 2015, right? And now they are, you know, core figures. They, they will extract, if McCarthy becomes Speaker, you know, pretty high level leadership positions, you know, as Chairman, whether as, as Whip's or Majority Leaders and so forth. And also many of the people who were here in 2016,

• 55:29Speaker 01

  we talked about before, have, I think, you know, had a fairly center-right orientation. Were very enamored of Paul Ryan, very enamored of, you know, even like Lindsey Graham early on. And, and then quickly saw where the passion in the party was and transformed themselves into basically election deniers. I mean, they all voted against certification, which would have been a radical act in any previous election. And so you have, you know, the people who would have been considered potentially serious members of Congress, you know, elevated to powerful kooks. Or you have authentic kooks like Marjorie Taylor Greene getting elected. And, and, you know, she again will have an inordinate amount of power

• 56:14Speaker 01

  over Kevin McCarthy, partly because Trump likes her and, and because she has a level of, of following. So, yeah, no, it's, it's a very different Republican Party now than it was four or five years ago.

• 56:25Ezra Klein?

  And this strikes me as again, a, a way, if Republicans take the House, take the Senate, take the White House in, in 2024. I think there is more of a sense of continuity in that than would actually be true, because I think for the time period in which Donald Trump held the presidency and held Congress, he was working with a Republican Congress that was trying to mostly bend Donald Trump to their agenda. Like, he didn't have that much of his own agenda. They didn't really like him that much. It was a weird alliance of convenience and political necessity. And so they were trying to get him to do what they wanted. And in many cases, I think, sort of did to everybody's political detriment, right? You know, the tax cuts, the efforts

• 57:10Ezra Klein?

  to repeal Obamacare. But I think if Donald Trump or some other Trump-like figure wins in 2024 and has Congress, they're going to be working with a Republican Congress that is much more oriented towards wanting to support the president's agenda, or wanting to help the president convert or translate his intuitions into an agenda. Like, whatever tension there was, and I'm not saying it was greatly protective for the republic or anything, but I do think there was friction in the system. I think that friction is basically gone.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  I completely agree. And I think, you know, to be honest with you, I think the greater peril is not so much that there might be another massive budget-busting tax cut or something, or deregulation, but, you know, something like, you know, leaving NATO, something like formalizing the kind of election denialism, the kind of fascist, semi-fascist, whatever you want to call it, kind of ideas that Trump was promoting at the end. So, yeah, again, that's where I would sort of like, sort of leave policy behind for a second, which I'm loathe to do, because, you know, obviously theoretically, policy is what everyone is here for, but that's not really the case anymore. I mean, we're talking about a perch

• 58:28Speaker 01

  of power where they could re-engineer the basic rules of our governments and our democracy in a way that would make it very hard for not only Democrats to get anything done, you know, in a Trump White House, in a Republican House or Senate, but actually win elections going forward. So, again, I mean, to me, this feels a lot more existential than whether we're debating a tax cut or not.

• 58:53Ezra Klein?

  Do you think Donald Trump as a candidate at this point is all that unique inside the Republican Party and inside its presidential jockey? Or have we kind of hit that point where, I was talking to the political scientist Daniel Ziblott, and he was saying that that he thinks people think that the danger of Trump is unique. But he wonders if it's become more like Bonapartism, like there is sort of Napoleon. And then for a long time, like Bonapartism, even arguably still, is just a strain, a coherent strain in French politics. And Ziblott's view is that Trump is becoming just a strain in American politics, even if Trump himself leaves a picture. There are so many candidates who have become something like him that there's no way of

• 59:38Ezra Klein?

  excising that from our politics, much less from the Republican Party.

• 59:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't disagree with that. I mean, just for starters, I don't want Bonapartism in our country either. I mean, so let's sort of put that on the record. I do, you know, I think Trump is obviously not new anymore. I think the, I don't think Ron DeSantis would scale particularly well, especially if he runs against Trump. I mean, I think, you know, everyone's like, oh, well, you know, DeSantis is like a Trump with a brain and with discipline. But no, I mean, DeSantis doesn't have any of the appeal of Trump. I mean, it's a very, he's a very different character and so forth. But yeah, no, I mean, Trump unfortunately is not an unknown entity anymore. There's nothing new about him. But, but very unfortunately, we know exactly what he's capable of and might try next.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  I mean, like any authoritarian, he is going to do whatever he can get away with until he is stopped. And I believe, and again, this was one of the reasons I wrote the book. I mean, I think the place to do this is the Republican Party. I mean, if it's going to be a serious party, if it's going to be a major party, that's where this needs to stop. Otherwise, they continue to be this person, this set of ideas. And frankly, this sort of pile of incredible resentment to so much of what we would like to think that, like what we used to be called the civilized world, you know, would represent. So I don't think Trump was that interesting then. I don't think he's that interesting now. But unfortunately, you know, if he runs for the nomination, he's probably going to win it.

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  And then, you know, it's 80, however, year old Joe Biden against him, and who knows who's going to win.

• 1:01:16Ezra Klein?

  Let me then end by asking a question about the Democrats. So, so given what the Republican Party is now, given what Trumpism is, given sort of what they are facing as a coalition, what is your sense of how they should engage with it? And I guess I mean that in terms of of politics, but also, how do they engage a Republican Party that they actually do govern alongside? Like, should the Democratic Party be treating Republicans as beyond the pale? As, how do you see this sort of counter reaction in the Democratic Party? Is it sufficient? Is it insufficient? Do they appreciate what they're looking at? What's your view?

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  That's a great question. I mean, I think, first of all, the Democrats, as we know, are not that organized. So there is not exactly a cohesive or coherent strategy here. I mean, I think, look, it's, they have proven that it's hard enough just to govern on its own. I mean, I think that, you know, Biden gets a great deal of mockery, I think, from the left, especially for his talk of unity, his talk of trying, you know, hoping against hope that he can find some common cause with Republicans. You know, I do think that that's probably the correct instinct. I think, you know, eventually, if you keep trying, you can maybe pick a way. I don't think the Republican Party is going anywhere. But at the same time, you know, it's painful to have to talk to Marjorie Taylor Greene. It's painful to have to talk to Kevin McCarthy.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  It's painful to have to convince a election denier that, no, you know, Joe Biden really was legitimately elected as your 46th president. So, I don't know. I mean, I think, do you just have to hold your nose that much harder? Maybe. But, but ultimately, I would be a lot more frontal in attacking Trump and, and the level of menace that, that Republicans have imposed upon the country. I do think that the existential threats to the country now reside inside. The Republican Party, I think, you know, Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney have said as much explicitly, I don't think that's overstated. And look, I don't think it's like everyone's like, you know, oh, don't mention Trump or don't make it about Trump, you know, focus

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  on kitchen table issues and we're going to help you keep your health care and so forth. I mean, yeah, all of that is compelling and probably very effective at a district wide level. But I don't know, I think that in some ways, Republicans haven't been vilified enough by Democrats. I think the contrast could be a lot more sharply drawn than it is. I don't know if Biden's the one to do it necessarily. I don't think he really has it in him and really don't, I don't think he wants to govern that way. But I don't know, I would, I would think that, that Republicans could be called out a lot more directly than they are now.

• 1:03:54Ezra Klein?

  I think it's a good place to come to an end. All is our final question. What are three books you'd recommend to the audience?

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  I love Tim Miller's book, Why We Did It. I hope I'm saying it right. Tim Miller is a, you know, longtime Republican operative, who basically wrote about his journey to sort of disenchantment in the Trump years. Reading our colleague, or actually not our colleagues, I don't work here anymore, but Maggie Haberman's book, enjoying it, you know, a little burnt out on the Trump genre, but I'm enjoying it. I'm reading a fiction book by someone who works from my agent's office and it's called NSFW, Not Safe For Work. And it's by a very talented young writer named Isabel Kaplan. Everyone should buy it. I grabbed it off of her desk or off my agent's desk, read it when I was on a plane

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  and thoroughly enjoyed it. So read NSFW. I always get those four letters worth. So yeah, those are three, three recent ones.

• 1:04:52Ezra Klein?

  And your new book is Thank You For Your Servitude, Donald Trump's Washington And The Price Of Submission. Mark Leibovich, thank you very much.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  Ezra, thanks so much for having me.

• 1:05:14Ezra Klein?

  The Ezra Klein Show is produced by Emma Fala Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, and Roshay Karma. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker, and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones, mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristen Lynn and Christina Semeluski.