Dana Milbank: The 25-Year Crack-Up of the GOP

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Welcome to the World War podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. What a remarkable week. I am old enough to remember when August used to be the dog days. And I think I’ve mentioned this several times.

Last August turned out, I think, to be pivotal for the Biden administration in this August certainly. Has the potential of also being a pivotal month. You’re seeing a shift in the conventional wisdom about the midterm elections inflation seems to be cooling a little bit. The tide may be turning in the war in Ukraine. All of those things are happening.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden and the Democrats are racking up some some pretty big and unexpected legislative wins whether they’ll matter or not in normal America, we don’t know. And We continue to have primary elections that that underlying Donald Trump’s absolute vice like grip over the Republican Party as as he goes from strength to the pluralable strength, more election deniers move closer to power. You have the right, absolutely, on in Fuego, after the raid at Mar a Lago, Republicans who are rallying, there’s a big raw raw moment. And yet, because we live in a split screen universe, which is a nice way of saying alternative realities. We are also You have to acknowledge that Donald Trump has had a hell of a week.

I mean, we could spend the first ten minutes just going through all the stuff that’s happening to him whether it’s the Fulton County grand jury. The investigation in New York, the appeals court ruling that says that he actually asked to turn over his tax returns, which are apparently not under audit anymore. Turnover’s tax returns to congress. More subpoenas being issued to his henchmen and his confederates. Pennsylvania congressman has his phone seized.

So to sort out all of this, including how the hell we got here and what will make a difference. We’re very lucky to be joined by Dana Millbank nationally syndicated columnist for the Washington Post who was out with a new book this week. The destruction scientists, the twenty five year crack up of the Republican Party, Dana. Welcome back to the podcast. It is great to be with you, Charlie, in

this very busy August week when everybody was supposed to be at the beach. Well,

that’s it. I mean, honestly, there was a time in my life where I think everybody in journalism that I knew would have taken pretty much this week off. This would be the week that, you know, you you circle it on your calendar, well, nothing’s gonna happen then. Right?

Exactly. And who in their right mind would release a book then? It’s a Here we are. August is the new November. Well, that’s that’s true because

there is no downtime Okay. So we have a lot of ground to cover, but I think we have to start — Yeah. — with the fact that the former president of the United States plead the fifth amendment. Four hundred and forty times yesterday. This is part of the civil suit investigation by the New York Attorney General, Leticia James, who is probing Trump’s business operations.

And Trump issued a statement that he’s just not gonna answer any questions from the racist attorney general of of New York. By the way, Dana. Okay. So just so people don’t think I’m reaching here. You know, the fact that he throws in the word, the racist to attorney general.

Basically, isn’t that Donald Trump’s way of saying and by the way, she’s black. We run what else? Why else you just throw that word out there? Yes. I I know.

I’m not even

sure why he feels he needs to use coded words anymore. Right? The cats out of the bag, you can you’ll go you can go ahead and say the attorney general is black and and therefore is after me just like that Mexican American judge is after

Yeah. I mean, we’re we’re sort of way past the era of subtlety here. But the fact that the president, the former president, pledged the fifth amendment, which of course he has every right to do as an American citizen not to give testimony that would incriminate him. Right? He is completely free to do that.

And other people are free to draw inferences from this or are free to say, well, why are you Bleeding the fifth amendment, why are you refusing to answer questions that you think might incriminate you? Unless, you think you might be incriminated because you committed crimes. Now, you know who thinks that way, Dana, you know who thinks that way? This guy thinks that way. Uptakes of it.

If you’re interested why you’re taking the fifth amendment. When you have your staff, taking the fifth amendment, taking the fifth so they’re not prosecuted. I think it’s disgraceful. Fifth amendment. Fifth amendment.

Fifth amendment. Barmo. Fifth amendment. Bob, Yeah. And so data, he’s then look, there’s always a tweet.

Right?

There is a tweet for every purpose. And in this case, multiple audio clips for this purpose. So let’s talk about where we’re

at right now. I I just wanna stress once again that you know, in our news cycle even during the dog days, there seems to be this inexorable need and demand that everybody have hot takes about everything. We still don’t know what happened at Mar a Lago. Yes. Right?

I mean, we still don’t know what they were looking for. Why they raided Mar a Lago, and we don’t know what they found, do we? Mhmm.

Yeah. Charlie, if we were in a normal system right now, we would say, okay. Oh, this doesn’t look as a legal matter. This doesn’t look good for the president. And everybody would be counseling people to take a deep breath because we don’t know the facts.

And instead, What we’re hearing right now from Fox News is we’re under attack, greatest attack in the history of our republic. We’re hearing from news max that Trump is in danger of being assassinated. We’re hearing from elected Republicans in congress saying things like They’re coming after you. No one is safe. This is reckless rhetoric that is designed to rile people up.

At the time when everybody’s already so close to the edge. And of course, it only takes one lunatic to cause mass mayhem.

So,

you know, we’re at a totally uncharted ground here. I mean, I had compared it this week to the the run up to the Oklahoma City bombing when people were just playing with fire as the militias were growing in power. And I I really fear that we’re at that kind of moment again. You know, so on the one hand, we’ve got the legal discussion going on, but it’s completely eclipsed by this notion that this corrupt racist government and the corrupt FBI and the DOJ are executing their political opponents. So even Trump sitting there and taking the fifth is yet more example to his supporters of him being persecuted, of him being the victim.

There is nothing that can occur in our system now without it, redounding to Trump’s victimization.

What you wrote this week. I would like nothing more than to be wrong about this, but the reckless response by the GOP Fox News access to the FBI to Mar a Lago makes it feel as though we’re falling into the abyss. And coincidentally, I quoted that in my newsletter yesterday saying, I too would like you to be wrong about this. But you’re not. This does feel like a uniquely dangerous moment and it’s the moment at which you would hope that if there are still responsible voices on the right in the Republican Party, this would be the moment that they would be you know, raising, you know, caution flags and yet they are whipping it up, providing the permission structure for the most absurd and obscene conspiracy theories and characterizations of their own government.

Yeah. And I mean, I could see them, you know, wanting to rally behind Donald Trump, but the the the way in which this is being done now is to It’s a deliberate effort to turn people against the government to believe that the government is out to get them. And this is exactly the sort of thing we were seeing. From the likes of Steve Stockman. Remember him and Helen Chenowith back in nineteen ninety four?

Jeez. You know, if the ATF agents are, you know, coming for you, you know, take a headshot. You know?

Kill them.

Kill the SOB. He said Gordon Litti. And look, that’s why I said I’d really like to be wrong about this, but we’re already at a point violence. And if you look at some have at the, you know, pro Trump boards and and social media, they’re talking, you know, huge talk of civil war. Calls to arms, when does the shooting begin bloodshed?

And, you know, as as I was saying a moment ago, it doesn’t mean that, you know, you have to have some coordinated patriot group or oathkeepers doing this. You need to have one guy in his basement who just, you know, has a three d printer and just made a a switch for his his glock hand gun that allows him to fire fifteen rounds in a in a second. So it it just it just seems to me, you know, you you you never wanna say any one piece of rhetoric is responsible for any one act of a madman, but a whole lot of inflammatory rhetoric is going to cause things to go badly. And

people I think do need to understand, you know, we we were talking about, you know, seditious conspiracies and insurrection attempts to overthrow the government. However, The other side of that story is is that if you convince enough Americans that your government is indistinguishable from East Germany or communist Cuba, if in fact they are oppressive tyrants who are destroying the constitution. If you convince people that in fact the election was stolen, then it is not a completely irrational response to say then we should overthrow that government. Right? I mean, this is what sows the seed.

That that if you look at police and law enforcement and the federal government as jack booted thugs who pose an imminent threat to everything that America stands for, then then the patriotic thing is to fight back and to engage in in selection. I mean, this is the danger. I’m I’m not defending it providing a rationalization, but to just underline the real danger of what happens if people begin to think that the democratic process is completely illegitimate. And the only response to this kind of tyranny is seventeen seventy six is to shoot these

guys in the head if they’re about to take away your rights? Yeah, it tragically, it is rational. Remember Sharon Engel, another famous name this was from twenty ten. Talked about second amendment remedies being used to respond to the tyranny of the government tyranny is is showing up quite a bit again even from elected Republicans. And so that is I mean, if you are under attack, if the government has resorted to tyranny.

Well, that’s exactly what your second amendment remedies are for. So it’s not like a theoretical risk. We’ve seen this happen at various times. We saw it in ninety four, ninety five, we saw it in twenty ten, twenty eleven, and now we’ve had a much bigger build up. And much more easier for would be malle factors to coordinate online or just to radicalize online and the weapons are a lot easier to come by.

So one of the really interesting things that you’ve done in this new book. The destruction is the twenty five year crack up of the Republican Party is you try to address a question that I wrestle with all the time is like, how long has this been going on? Where did this come from? Was there some sort of a turning point? So in your book, when you ask the question, how did the GOP get word is today?

You trace the roots of the conspiracies and the lies that are, you know, have created the world. And you go back to nineteen ninety four when Newt Gingrich led the party to the midterm victory. So talk to me about why you think that Gingrich was the pivotal figure in this devolution, deconstruction of the Republican Party?

Sure. I and and Charlie, I wanna say that it wasn’t obvious to me in real time that this is where this was going to go. It was disturbing, but it wasn’t obvious to where where this was going to go. And I know there were a lot of good Republicans at the time and people who are maybe maybe yourself included who were aligned with a lot of this, who who could not at all see where this this was going. But in retrospect, it makes a lot more sense.

So you had Newt Gingrich in the nineteen eighties, late nineteen eighties was saying the real problem with the republican party is they don’t teacher to be nasty enough. You know, so he sends out the famous memo in nineteen ninety saying, you know, speak like Newt. Talk about Democrats that they are corrupt, that they’re traders, that they’re abusing power. And, of course, his actual activities against two different Democratic speakers of the House. It just introduced an entirely new politics.

It’s common place now. This is, you know, we’re all living in Newton’s world right now. But when you think about the constant shutdowns, obstruction, the bitterness. Well, that’s – that has roots in the shutdowns of nineteen ninety five and nineteen ninety six. The constant bitterness in our politics has roots in a new lexicon.

And also, the conspiracy theories, the big lie that we talk about now the prototype for that I I described in the book is remember Vince Foster. Oh, jeez.

Yeah.

So, of course, there have always been conspiracy theories, you know. I mean, just think about the, you know, the the JFK assassination. But with Vince Foster, you know, just briefly Clinton, longtime Clinton friend, deputy White House counsel, suicide. Very obvious he was depressed, wrote a suicide note, was getting antidepressants, but others turned it into a suspected murder, you know, Dan Burton famously shooting a melon to prove that it was it was a murder. But Gingrich, you know, didn’t go as far as Mellon Shooting, but he did say, you know, four different independent investigations demonstrated that this was a suicide.

And he says, you know, I just don’t accept it. When he was speaker of the house, that I think that was pivotal because he was saying somebody second in line to the presidency is saying, okay. It’s alright to believe in these conspiracy theories to bring that in to the mainstream. So I think there’s a direct line from that. To, you know, Sarah Palens, death panels to the big lie.

So

what’s interesting about your analysis is you’re right that the contract with America really wasn’t that significant in nineteen ninety four. It really didn’t get that head away, but you’re right. But the rise of Gingrich and his shock troops sent the nation on a course toward the Rune’s politics of today. So it’s not the ideology, it’s the tactics, it’s posturing, it’s the willingness to go there. Is that your thesis?

Right. And I don’t think Gingrich wasn’t particularly ideological. He would like Trump himself, he started out with many different positions than the ones he wound up with. And, you know, we’ve got to remember Donald Trump I followed him around in nineteen ninety nine. He thought he might run for president on the reform ticket.

He was pro choice. He was for universal health care. He obviously donated a lot of money to Democrats. And he his rival, Pat Buchanan, and he’s saying we need to be for Hollarance, he went to the Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles to talk about his

unrest. Yeah. So

he completely reinvented himself to get out in front of what he saw as this growing nativist base of the Republican Party. So that Trump reinvention, a Gingrich reinvention, It wasn’t about ideology. The Bush administration with, you know, Dick Cheney popping up and saying, Greg, improve the deficits don’t matter. I mean, decoupling the Republican Party from small government conservatism. It over time lost its moorings in in conservatism and small government conservatism.

So in, you know, in a very real sense, I

think the Republican Party left you, Charlie. By the way, since you mentioned that section on Trump’s early run when he was reinventing himself as sort of the anti pat begin. I read those several pages that love to my wife because really extraordinary. If you wanna know about where Donald Trump came from and and, you know, how the posture he’s taking out is completely different than what some of the things he was talking about. Let me tell you just a very brief story that I that I have told before, and this is in the in the interest of full disclosure.

That in early nineteen ninety five, right after the Republican takeover and the Gingrich was writing high and was writing a book, I actually was hired to be his ghostwriter for his book. And I spent a week with the speaker, which was quite an experience I eventually decided that this guy was completely incoherent in terms of his his ideas. I mean, watching him that he was too crazy. To deal with. So I bailed on the project, which was one of the best decisions I ever made.

But I also came to the conclusion that that that the ginglish was with something other than a principled person who is interested in coherent philosophy of government and putting that as nicely as I possibly can. So that, yes, for people who say that, well, this is all the inevitable result of conservative ideology, guys like New Gingrich were among these first of the Well, look, I mean, there’s always been liars that have always been charlatans, but he was the first person who seemed to be bringing that sort of Charlotteanism that that really also aggressive in your face triggering the opposition for the sake of triggering that opposition. Into the center of our politics. And — Mhmm. — we haven’t gone back from them.

And no one’s able to push back against that anymore.

Yeah. I mean, Trump is not the inevitable result of conservative ideology. He’s the betrayal of conservative ideology. And yes, of course, you saw that with Ginkgoge, and you certainly saw it in the spending during the George W. Bush administration was greater than at any point.

Since Lyndon Johnson, but it was a betrayal of conservative principles. I mean, you know, obviously, Ronald Reagan himself would have no home in this Republican Party. It’s very clear that John McCain wouldn’t, George w Bush, clearly doesn’t. Dick Cheney has has returned, but It’s very clear that he’s lost this battle already. So it’s very much a betrayal in in my view of conservative principles.

You know, I can’t tell you how many discussions I’ve had with people. I used to cover the White House during the George W. Bush administration and saying to them, can you remind me what we were all fighting about back

with us?

Yeah. No. Because, you know, like, it seemed like everybody was at each other’s throats, but they were talking about the size of tax cuts. They they weren’t talking about pedophiles with dementia turning us into a socialist dystopia. We were discussing what was best for our nation because Each side believes still that the other side was the opponent, not the enemy.

It was in transition then, but now now

that is entirely lost. So it’s it’s totally speculative. I I see somebody on Twitter for raising the question, like, well, with with Ronald Reagan have gone along with with Donald Trump. And, of course, we absolutely don’t know. I have no idea.

Which is why the Dick Cheney story is so interesting. It’s a little bit like a time machine. Like, somebody who has come from a different era and it’s like, okay. What would you from this era, from the before time? What would you think about what’s happening now?

And we know where Cheney and Liz Cheney are are standing here now. I don’t think it’s possible to overstate the role of the donor class, the media, the interest groups, and everything. So you talk about the unraveling how do you measure the unraveling? How do how do we chronicle the unraveling of the threads of democracy and civil society over the last quarter century?

Well, look, I think, Charlie, there have always been the conspiracy minded. There have always been the violent. There always been the authoritarian. There’s always been the the white nationalists, the racists. You know?

And so we’ve already discussed how these popped up at various times, you know, like Pat Buchanan, for example. And before that, the John Birch Society, but there was always sort of a nucleus. There were people in the Republican Party. There was, you know, Bob Dole would push back against that. There was Charlie Sykes refusing to be meets a a ghost writer.

You know, there was George w Bush. There were and there’s George h w Bush. There was a solid porer there that would say no, we’re not letting that into the tent. Yes, we’re gonna try to harness that energy but we’re not going to let them take over. Gradually, they took over.

You know, so I’ve sort of put it into four baskets one is sort of the loss of contact with reality at the beginning of the alternative facts. The idea that you can say things that are just fundamentally not true and get away with it, and a large proportion of your voters are gonna believe that. The notion of dysfunction. That I think particularly accelerated with Newton and with the loss of the greatest generation from politics, you know, replaced by culture warriors who thought the other side was the enemy, letting in the the white nationalist more and more into the party to try to generate energy from them. We saw that a good bit with the tea party.

And then these anti democratic tendencies, which I think is inevitable, if you’re gonna place your future of your party with this affected noncollege educated white voters, they are becoming minority The only way you win that is to get them to turn out an extraordinary number. So that’s what leads us to where We are now with what’s happening in the state legislatures to with disenfranchisement and taking over of of the voting operations. But none of this would have happened if we didn’t have after they initially recoil at Donald Trump, the Republican establishment, in twenty sixteen after he secured the nomination saying to the donors, it’s okay. You know, he’ll be our guy. He’ll be our useful idiot.

So, we need to describe the Republicans as destructurists. Let’s be more explicit. What was it that they destroyed because, of course, until five minutes ago, conservatives would have told you that they are the party of American exceptionals and they are the party of American greatness. Right? They are the party of America.

First, so what is that you think they have destroyed or they are distracting?

Well, crucially, they’ve destroyed our shared sense of the truth. The idea that, you know, you’re entitled to your opinion, but not as Moynihan said to your own facts. Now they we are entitled to to our own set of facts. It’s impossible. As Liz Cheney said, to live in a free society, when you can’t agree on the truth.

This whole idea, I mean, if, you know, Mitch McConnell famously said we want to make Barack Obama a one term president, and, you know, build up a litany of defeat so that suddenly he becomes a failure. That was one thread that was pulled out, you know, that the transition from Bob Michael who successfully shepherded Ronald Reagan’s agenda through the Democratic House by working on consensus and, you know, making concessions with Gingrich who said, we’re gonna stop things at all costs. Now, yes, they got through a welfare reform in a balanced budget. So he he learned after his initial obstructionism. But that became the way things would work going forward after the Bush administration came in and we expected with the fifty fifty senate this extraordinary close election they would be governing by consensus.

But, you know, Carl Roeve and others had this innovation that there’s no more persuadable voters. We just need to turn out our side in maximum number and ideally depressed turnout on the other side and we win. And guess what, Charlie, they weren’t wrong you can at least in the short term, you can definitely do that. And the whole idea is we don’t need to have consensus. We don’t need to compromise with the other side.

We’re just gonna get every maximum thing we can out of our side. You know, the hazard rule, same idea that the ideas you have to have consensus within your own caucus. You can’t be breaking a deal with the other side.

So I I’ve used the term with the recessive gene on the right that that we we always had the politics of paranoid, the conspiracy, theorist, the nuts, jobs, the crackpots, etcetera, in in the party. But they were always sort of on the fringe, Pat Buchanan, maybe you know, was able to break out a little bit in nineteen ninety two, but but ultimately he didn’t get the nomination. It was not, you know, his his party. And so he was out there, you know, praising Adolf Hitler, you know, and lamenting me treatment of European and Americans. And they were never never dominant Donald Trump came along, and I guess this is the whole, you know, chicken and egg problem about, you know, white nationalism and racism.

They are tapping into it in a really ugly way, which would suggest that it was always latent there. But so in in your read, how much was always there and how much though is being fomented. And and I asked this because I I continue to look at the voters in places like Wisconsin who voted for Barack Obama twice and then voted twice for Donald Trump. So what what is it? I mean, it’s what is your take on that?

There have always been crackpots in American

culture, on the right and on the left. And I don’t think people on the right were any more likely to believe in conspiracy theories, any more likely to be violent, arguably more likely to be authoritarian, but I don’t think that’s by a substantial margin. And so what’s happened here is not that there are more of these people. I don’t think there are more people today in America who don’t believe in democracy than there were ten, twenty, thirty years ago. The problem is they’ve been mainstreamed.

They’ve been allowed in by people who knew better. By the leadership within the Republican Party. So I, you know, that’s the crucial change that happened. It wasn’t a change to us as as Americans. It was about who were allowing to be in the mainstream.

And, you know, I think Trump happened in large part And before that, the tea party happened in large part because of a backlash against a black president. And yes, you there are a number of people who were Obama voters, who became Trump voters. But I think even more of the story of Trump is different people entirely. Turning out in extraordinary numbers for Donald Trump who got his start with the burger campaign in twenty eleven fueled by Fox News, you know, a blatantly racist notion that Obama wasn’t born in the United States, you know, which is just one step away from saying, he’s a Muslim. And what was he a Kenyan colonialist or what?

Something like that. Something that Newt had said. But that is what allowed Trump to happen. It was it was a natural backlash that was occurring that he stoked rather than saying, as the party did under Pat Buchanan, no, we don’t stand for this. There was no longer that core to stand together.

And say, as individuals did, but never together as a party to say, no, we don’t stand for that. So I think part of it was that backlash against the black president. And, of course, in twenty sixteen, backlash against a woman becoming president. So, you know, and there have been, you know, any number of political science studies that show that these were, you know, primary motivating factors for a number of Trump voters. It’s, you know, it’s a it’s a misconception that this was an economic concern.

It was very much a concern about white men losing their place. In American culture. So that’s what allowed it to happen and a Republican establishment that said we’re gonna make a deal with the devil. We’re gonna take this short term win here, and then we’ll we’ll be able to deal with it. And of course, they weren’t able to deal with it.

Well,

there’s a lot of focus on the influence of Fox News, which I think people listening to this understand. But Fox News is only part of what a developer can do this sort of a hermetically sealed right wing media ecosystem. And and I I certainly recall when even pretty hardcore conservatives had to live in an informational world where they were exposed to mainstream news, fact based news, other opinions. In fact, I used to joke that, you know, to be a conservator, of course, you knew, what the other side was saying because you’re you you get it on daily basis on radio and television and magazines and newspapers, etcetera. In in some ways that gave conservatives an advantage because they knew what the other side thought whereas, and again, this is from the four times But, you know, people on the left can go through much of their lives without ever encountering a conservative argument, you know.

So in William Buckley used to joke about you know, the the liberals were actually surprised to hear that there was another point of view on all of this. Well, that’s completely changed now, hasn’t it? Because you can live in a world in which you know, not only are there no legitimate arguments or facts or issues that that that you need to confront that might challenge your worldview, but that you can really mask in a world that reinforces all of your prayers and that is constantly designed to make you paranoid, outraged, and angry at anyone who doesn’t agree with you. I mean, that really hasn’t been a change in the last twenty five years, hasn’t it?

Yeah. Twenty five now even even more I think it was Rush Limbaugh went national with his radio show in nineteen eighty eight, which is also exactly the time concurrent with Cambridge’s rise and there was a lot of symbiotic relationship there. So if Fox News, which began in nineteen ninety six, didn’t happen. Something else would have because we’re all we were already headed in that direction. So you had this explosion of conservative talk radio.

You had the drudge report and then you had Fox News. And of course, look, the social media has siloed everybody so that, you know, everybody is only getting a news feed based on whatever’s reinforcing their original views that they were predisposed to have. Anyway, so this is a universal problem throughout our culture. It took a turn on the right. I think it took a turn with certain aspects of talk radio that particularly with Limbaugh and Lavin that took a more pernicious turn, and it certainly happened on Fox News as well.

John Bainer wrote a book about his experience in this, and I’ve I’ve quoted from him as well, but, you know, he sees this notion that people he thought were part of same participants in American culture sort of went off the deep end and became, you know, the craziest and he complained about it. To Roger Ailes and realize he’s talking to the president of the crazy economy. So part of it’s that natural changes that occurred because of social media It’s also the total breakdown and loss of anything resembling local news in America, local metropolitan newspapers, local TV, that United Americans in a sense, we all care about our, you know, roads and our weather and whatever else is going on. And now that we’re all we’re not getting our local news and we’re just getting national news, which is much more about fighting. Of course, that fuels the situation we’re in.

So there’s there are certainly structures and changes at play here that are bigger than any ideology or any political parties. And it was a little bit of partial by accident and partially by discovery that I think innovators like Limbaugh realized that, you know, people are gonna tune in when he plays Barakla Magic Nigro on

his station. And, unfortunately, that was rewarded. So where’s the bending. With the arc of the Republican Party bending, you talk about the degradation accelerating and you can see it with Republican leaders ignoring or discrediting. The information is coming out about January six, the Trump demanding the removal of the of the mags at the ellipse rally or entertaining — Mhmm.

— or actually thinking about having the military seizing voting machines, installing new leaders of the Department of Justice, all of this. So where do you think this is going? Because my sense is that all of this is accelerating at an e you know, at an exponential rate that that no matter how bad you thought it was before it’s worse now and no matter how bad you think things are now, because the the stakes are constantly, you know, have to constantly be be jacked up that it’s going to be worse. What what is your sense about where the arc is bending?

Well, I’m hoping for a bulwark takeover of the Republican Party that will save us from all of this. So I mean, that’s gonna be any week now. But you

want a you want a unicorn for Christmas too, don’t you?

But, you know, as you outlined it, you know, there, you know, we’re getting more and more historical. It seems almost with every passing week here. You know, something’s gotta give. I’m very optimistic in the long term because this struggle of the changing color of America, I mean, it gets resolved. You can’t you can only defy demographics for so long.

We’re becoming a white minority nation. That’s happening even if we don’t have anymore immigrants. So you know, a generation or two from now, that situation will resolve itself. But, you know, what’s gonna be left of our democracy in the short term, what will we have left by the time we get to that is where I’m uneasy. You know, and made the comparison to, you know, the pre Oklahoma city bombing and before the violence of twenty ten and twenty eleven because, you know, unfortunately, the kind of heated system with heated rhetoric we’re in now almost inevitably leads to violence.

Will there be something catastrophic that will cause us all to recoil and turned back from the abyss. Mhmm. Well, I don’t wanna wish for something catastrophic to happen

to cause that, but it’s hard to see in the short term how the fever breaks. So where are we at now with the midterm elections? And I mentioned at the at the top of the podcast, it it does feel the conventional wisdom is shifting a little bit, inflation is abating a little bit. We’re having more polls showing that maybe this massive red wave, maybe a wave, but it’s, you know, it’s going you know, the hurricane is downgraded. Yeah.

Row versus wave continues to be huge question mark, particularly after what happened in Kansas. So, you know, put on your pundit hat here. Where do you think we’re at? I mean, if you and I were having this conversation a couple of ago saying, you know, Joe Biden and the Democrats are about to get wiped out. That doesn’t appear to be the case right now or what do you think?

Well, Charlie, I tossed my crystal ball after twenty sixteen. I I I had to eat my column after saying Republican voters are are too good for Donald Trump. But look, I mean, democrats, I mean, they’re going to lose the house. The losses will be limited just because there are so few seats in play. And I fear Republicans will take the wrong lesson from that and that is that, you know, it’s a reward for the kind of politics that we are in right now.

You know, the the the senate may be a different story, but I see the the midterm elections as something Republicans are gonna as vindication of the kind of politics they’ve been practicing. These legislative wins that

Democrats are touting that think to put the wind at their back. Do you think that they will in fact have an impact on on the election? Or do you think

that that’s a side shift? It could have a marginal impact. But, you know, a moment ago, we’re talking about the silos. And if you are hearing that this socialist demented pedophile in in the White House, is bringing America to wound. I just don’t think that stuff is breaking through.

I think we’re fundamentally in parallel universe. Is right now, are in a universe and then an alternative reality. The number of people who are just persuadable are just very, very few. So I I just I see those things as having some effect at the margin, which as you So, yes, you’re correct. It could lessen the the height of the wave that’s gonna crash, but I just I just don’t see any, you know, actual thing that’s occurring as being able to to shape that.

I mean, even in the best of times, Joe Biden is not gonna get fifty

percent approval. We remember though, you know, in two thousand ten, two thousand twelve were Republicans blue winnable races across the country because they went too crazy. They edge cracked So you have Churchill Walker running percentage. You have doctor Oz in in Pennsylvania. You have Kerry Lake running for governor in Arizona, Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania.

All of these or eminently winnable races for Republicans. I guess the question is, does is crazy still disqualifying? Well,

I think it will be, and that’s the only reason why they this Senate may remain Democratic is because, you know, the the crazies have certainly prevailed in Republican primaries, thanks in in no small part to Donald Trump. So let’s assume Democrats are against the odds able to keep the senate and lose the house. Will the Republicans draw a lesson that we would have done even better if we didn’t nominate all these crazies or will they take the lesson that our politics has caused us to win back the house and we need to double down on our campaign of crazy for twenty twenty four. I I think it’s pretty obvious to me what lesson I’ll be drawn.

Well, you know, your your book is the destructionist, the twenty five year crack up of the republican party, republicans like Kevin McCarthy will say, well, the only thing that we’ve destroyed is the Democratic Party. And look, this is winning. We didn’t crack up. We didn’t we we cracked the code how to to get back power. Right?

I mean, isn’t isn’t isn’t that gonna be their spin after November?

It absolutely will be. They can say they destroy the Democratic Party and maybe that’ll be true. They could say they destroyed the media. They could say they destroyed the FBI and the Department of Justice and the court system. And in doing so, they prevailed as a Republican party and and broke America.

So let’s talk about a a pure victory.

Damian Millbank. Thank you so much. Dana is nationally syndicated columnist for the Washington Post latest book out this week, which I strongly recommend. In fact, I blurbed, which is, you know, I’m putting my mouth where my mouth is. The destructionist, the twenty five year crack up of the Republican Party, Danny Millbank.

Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.

Charlie, I love the show.

Thank you so much for having me. The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio production by Jonathan Seres. I’m Charlie Sykes. Thank you for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast, and we’ll be back tomorrow. Do this all over again.

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