David Corn: How the GOP Unleashed the Furies

Welcome to the Bullwear Podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes boy in the BFD stories of the day. I think at the top of the list has to be this New York Times report. Justice Department issued forty subpoenas in a week expanding its January sixth inquiry sees the phones of top Trump advisers, which the time says is a sign of an escalating investigation two months before the midterm election and clearly, they are also going after all of the fundraising activities. And as the time reports, the fact the justice department is now seeking information related to fundraising comes as the House Committee examining the January sixth, the attack has raised questions about money mister Trump solicited under the premise of fighting election fraud.

So for those of us who were somewhat skeptical about aggressive Merrick Garland might be in going after Donald Trump and his circle. I think we’re getting the answer. So I wanna discuss all of this. With today’s guest David Korn, DC Bureau, Chief of Mother Jones and Analysts for MSNBC and Author of The New Book, which is Out today. American Psychosis, an historical investigation of how the Republican Party went crazy.

I’m sort of laughing.

But, you

know, the American psychosis hit, you know, this feels very timely. And that I don’t know how you feel about this, but it feels like it becomes more timely all the time. And when when you set out to write this, did you think it was simply an historical account as opposed to putting a classified America on the couch? You

know, I started this you know, somewhat over a a year ago. And when I began, I did it obviously because the subject interested me. This is the history of the Republican party’s interactions with far right fanaticism and how the GOP for seven decades has encouraged and exploited extremism, tribalism, bigotry, paranoia, conspiracy theories, and so forth. But I didn’t I did not think that when it came out, it would be as timely as it is. You know, we seem To have finally caught on, we collectively, the political media world, to this very important conversation, which is the whole that magna extremism has on the Republican Party and whether Donald Trump has led the party in the direction of fascism.

I mean, that’s what we’ve been talking about last few weeks publicly. I think some of us have been concerned and I’m worried about this. For for years now, but it seems to have come to a head, particularly with Joe Biden’s recent speech and all the outrage about calling it a party that wants to overturn elections. And now supports the leader who wants to pardon violent insurrectionist, semi fascist. And of course, it’s self serving of me to say this on this particular day, But to understand the moment we’re in now and more importantly to figure out where we go from here, I think having a real good understanding of the history what has brought us to this point is crucial because you know this.

But, you know, I think we all lose sight of this. It didn’t start with Donald Trump. And Donald Trump is not, in essence, the problem. The problem is that millions of Americans who are susceptible and eager to buy the swelled he sells, and this is an issue. The Republican Party and it’s in the base of the party’s relationship with extremism and tribalism and paranoia and conspiracy theory has gone on for seven decades.

It’s been in some ways, I think, building in the last twenty or three years, and it’s brought us to this moment And that’s sort and if you understand that, I think it informs how you think about where we should go from now. There are a lot of people out there And, you know, maybe you’re on this category. I don’t know. Charlie, you can tell me. Would it say if we could just go back to the way the Republic party used used to be?

You know, just, you know, like, my father’s republican party. And and the point of my book is that that is a bit of a myth and that, yes, there was a time when when you had presidents who cared about policy to a certain degree and who were not demigodging in the same way that Donald Trump is. But the part of my book is that this strain that has been let free to run under Donald Trump has always always been there. The party’s always had a relationship ship with it. This is the sort of the dark side, the dark history of the Republican Party.

And so I think going backwards, is not a solution. I think we need to figure out what to do now that this virus within the party has become a pandemic. And and threatens not just the party, but the republic overall. And so understanding, you know, what’s happened over the last seven decades, and seeing how it’s been how it’s developed and and and and it’s been cultured and cultivated by the Republican Party is key to figuring out how the rest of us should handle the problem we face today. Well, let’s start with the title of of your book.

We we can get to

the stream is a movie we can get to the fascism in a moment, which, of course, we we will. But the title of your book is American Psychosis. And and then I found to be kind of get you you sort of stop there because there is that feeling that we are a nation that has taken crazy pills. So talk talk to me about psychosis because you use the word psychosis and crazy. And by the way, I mean, I I obviously agree.

I mean, you know, I wrote the book, you know, how the right lost its mind but you go for even further so to why psychosis?

Well, psychosis is when you’re detached from reality. You can’t tell truth from why non fiction from fiction. That sorts of psychosis. And it’s not necessarily just being extreme and saying you’re an extreme libertarian and you don’t believe or an extreme art anarchist and you don’t believe there should be government which they happen both to believe in. Right?

It’s not necessarily political extremism. It’s the inability to engage with objective reality, even to recognize it. And if you look at, you know, the big lies is one of the biggest examples we have here that you have tens of millions of Americans who do not accept the reality of Joe Biden’s victory, and they believe that somehow it was stolen, some believe the cock mamey conspiracy theories about the Chinese, the Venezuelans, Bamboo Ballads, Deep States, CIA, you know, two thousand mules, and none of that is true. And the thing is, There’s been no evidence. I mean, it’s not even something we argue about.

Like, what does it mean that ABC happen? And maybe it means this. No. There is no confirmed evidence of any of this. So that’s what I mean psychosis.

And

you could throw in you could throw in the Q1 on conspiracy because, you know, the baby face eating conspiracies, pizza gay.

Horstism and everything else. Horstism.

But how much of this is? And this is why I wanna focus on your title, American psychosis. Because this is, of course, the the haunting fear. Is is that America really has, you know, gone crazy that, you know, or or that the right has completely lost. It’s my So how much of this is ideological?

And how much of this is psychological? I mean, you follow what I’m getting at here? Yeah.

It’s not that I

believe ideological lies. Or to believe, you know, that, you know, for example, there’s a communist plot to take over the country. That’s largely ideological. But at some point, it also becomes psychological. You know, Richard Hofstetter described this as the politics of paranoia.

So where does it morph one morph into the other? And

that’s you know, I harkened back to Richard Hofstager’s nineteen sixty four seminal essay, the paranoid style of politics. Because he saw this with McCarthyism. And I’m not sure there’s a clear line because there there is a, you know, there can be a concern an ontological concern about Leftism. You know, you don’t like Socialism. You fear that it moves towards communism and it takeover private industry, whatever, you can have an ideological aversion to to those notions.

But once you come to believe that the p that that the commies have infiltrated the PTA, that Dwight Eisenhower is a Communist Agent that George c Marshall, the Secretary of Defense, is leading a communist plot, which is what Joe McCarthy charged back in nineteen fifty one, and the Republican Party you know, rallied around him with this. You know, once you start to believe those sort of things, then it moves from from ideological too psychological. You’re being driven by by irrationality, by fear, by grievance, by resentment. And one word you left out there in this, you know, maybe triumvirates, you know, ideological, psychological, is also cultural. I think a lot of this is cultural and that people identifying in a tribal way, and they’re looking at whether you wanna call elites or the others, people who they don’t believe are true Americans that could have a racist component to it.

And they’re looking for reasons for conspiracy theories, but stories that tie together their feeling of enmity towards these other people. So they’re looking and they’re believing Q and A because if you don’t like Hillary Clinton, Well, obviously, she’s running a baby eating sex trafficking ring out of the basement of comet pizza even if it doesn’t have a basement. I mean, so there’s a, you know, sort of, a political cultural civil war going on in this nation. And I think it overlaps. With some of these psychological elements that drive people to become detached from reality and believe things that are just not true and have no basis in reality.

So

I probably should disclose at this point that I read your book in Gally and have blurred your book. And what I wrote is in this searing and deeply reported work, David Cornra counts how the modern GOPs succumb to the extremism alternative realities in paranoia. That spread the American psychosis that exploded on January sixth, a desperately important read. But as you can imagine, for someone with my background. It’s also a very, very challenging read.

And I wrote a book called, you know, how the write lost its mind, which was the revisionist history. Of conservatism. Your book I read as a revision of my revision, and I found it very, very challenging because you take some of the the the stories and the the narratives that that I had taken for granted and kind of turned it on its head. So let let’s go back and forth on this because I do agree with you. When you say that there’s no going back to the Republican Party, but my take has been.

And and I wanna, again, have a discussion about this. My take has been, of course, there’s always been these elements, the crazies, the mouth breathers, the the extremists, the the paranoidics, the the the crap past. But that for much of the history of the Republican Party, they were the recessive gene. They were always there, but they were the recessive gene. You have a very different take.

Your your history is how they were always important and how the Republican Party failed again and again. So let’s start with Joe McCarthy. Okay? Seventy years ago, you know, nation’s number one Red Bader. And and you talk about all the highlights, all the times, the GOP bowed or depended on or promoted these far right extremists, Dwight Eisenhower surrendered to Joe McCarthy on a train.

Nineteen fifty one, McCarthy accused Harry Truman, of scheming to deliver the nation to disaster. Eisenhower knew McCarthy was a dangerous demagogue and a fabricator. And he was upset by the attack on Marshall. But ultimately, Eisenhower didn’t take a stand against Joe Joe McCarthy. Is and and and that that that seems like a seminal moment when the Republican party could have stood up against the fabricator and the and the demagogue and chose not to.

So how important was that moment? You

know, I don’t wanna give too much weight to any particular moment. But history sometimes does pivot at a particular point. Right? And often, it’s a point that you don’t recognize you know, that it’s happening at that at that moment in time. And it’s interesting.

Yeah. I I did morning Joe this — Mhmm. — this morning. And Joe himself, another recovering Republican, picked up on this particular anecdote, which leads off one of the chapters in the book. And I I so here is the chance for the war hero, Dwight Eisenhower, a man whose courage could not be challenged.

And who starred Joe McCarthy for what he was, a Scoundrel and a liar. And who had a personal beef with Joe McCarthy because Joe McCarthy had accused George c Marshall, then the Secretary of Defense, who had been Army Chief of Staff during over two, Eisenhower’s comrade in arms and deal front of his, he had acute McCarthy had accused Marshall of leading — Mhmm. — this in this small cabal taken over the US government that was plotting actively to hand the country over to the Soviets. This was a secretary of state of secretary of defense. So Eisenhower took this personally.

He saw McCarthy for who and what he was and recognized the danger. And he wanted to give a speech while they were campaigning together in Wisconsin before the nineteen fifty two presidential election, McCarthy Senator from Wisconsin was up for reelection with and Eisenhower is running for his first term. And he had a junior staff writer write a paragraph which would not call McCarthy out by name, but everyone would know it was an attack of McCarthy and a defense of George c Marshall. And members of the Republican elite, the governor of New Hampshire, the governor of Wisconsin, the R and C who are on the train, started drafting the speech and said, you can’t do that. You’re gonna kill us in Wisconsin.

We’re gonna lose votes. You know, we’re gonna lose Catholic votes because McCarthy had started drawing Catholic voters to were primarily Democrats into the republican party with his redbating. And Eisenhower on the train sent to his chief of staff. Okay. Take it out.

And gave his speech that night that was actually the Milwaukee journal called it Light McCarthyism. So I don’t know what would have happened if he had looked at McCarthy on that stage who was on you know, he would they were campaigning together and said those words what might have happened to the republican party. But to your larger point, you know, whether it’s a regressive gene or a dominant gene, it’s a gene that’s always been there. And I think it’s always been important to the party, electronically, you know, to give it a winning margin. And a lot of close elections, the Republicans would not have won if they hadn’t kept the crooks as Ronald Reagan once called them on their side.

You know, John Vayner with the tea party, Ronald Reagan with the moral majority, you know, at the time that he embraced them, leaders of the moral majority were saying that gay people wanted to kill Americans. That’s what Jerry misunderstood. And some of them were even saying that homosexuality was a capital crime. And according to God, homosexuals, lesbians gay people could be put to death. And, you know, there was a lot to Ron O’Regan other than, you know, extremism.

But he embraced these people and they gave him a winning margin in nineteen eighty against Jimmy Carter. So whether it’s regressive or non, It’s always been there and the party leaders have always reached out, found a way to embrace it and certainly have not try to put it down. Well,

let’s flip it around though because obviously there’s no question that this is this is true. There’s tolerance for all of this. I think there was the sense that, okay, they were they were not jobs, but we need that coalition. And therefore, we’re going to tolerate it and perhaps even even supported occasionally. But going back to your anecdote about Joe McCarthy and obviously this hits home because this is my home state and you know, you quote my old newspaper where I got my start at The Milwaukee Journal at the time, you know, called Eisenhower Out for surrendering ethical and moral principles in a frenzied quest for votes.

But as you pointed out, you know, Eisenhower goes on to win the election easily, and he regretted cutting his remarks, and he continued to load McCarthy. And so Joe McCarthy was a force in the Republican Party, but so was Margaret Chase Smith, so was Dwight Eisenhower, and ultimately the Republican Party turned against Joe McCarthy. And, you know, majority of I mean, and Republican senators went along with the vote to Senaterium. So Yeah. You don’t Republicans have had the Joe McCarthy’s, but they’ve also had the Margaret Chase Smith’s.

This was also the party of, you know, Edward Doerksen. You know, buried gold water, did obviously flirt with the far right, but ultimately he also then, you know, broke with Richard Nixon over ethical issues. He broke with a Christian right over its fundamentalism. This is a party that, yes, had these crazies out there and, you know, would make, you know, wink wink wink, but This is the little party that nominated not that long ago, Mitt Romney for president. It nominated John McCain for president.

And Paul Ryan was the vice presidential nominee a decade ago. So clearly, there’s always been a tension in the party between the nuts and the people who were trying to hold them back or making peace with them. So talk to me about that push and pull between a party that can nominate Mitt Romney one year and then go full could sort of queuing on a decade later. Right.

That’s a really good point. I I do think there has dim attention, but I do think it has waxed and waned. At different points in time. While McCarthy held the party, you know, under kind of tight control in the early fifties, half the Republicans in the senate, not all of them, half of them voted to censor him when he, you know, when his access has got too excessive. Right?

But the other half of the party continued to stoke McCarthyism without McCarthy. Right? And and and and so you know, and in sixty in sixty four, Bayard Goldworm made an alliance for the John Birch Society, which was McCarthyism on steroids, and wouldn’t denounce them, so he he could use them in his campaign. And and it was because of them that he’d beat Nelson Rockefeller, and this moderate liberal republican, in the nineteen sixty four contest for the presidential nomination of the Republican Party. So it’s it’s even with, you know, you can look at, like, the, you know, the Republican voters voting from the Romney because, you know, and and what was sort of a t part a year because there was no a tea party candidate, Michelle Bachman, Herman Cain, you know, of of Rick Perry, who was able to act at least a bit competent.

Right? But Mitt Romney still ended up embracing literally hugging Donald Trump when Trump was the number one birther in the cut

Yeah. Right. Right. I remember this. Yeah.

I

know. And and so yep. So myth doesn’t fall into it. Yeah. Yeah.

Myth doesn’t fall into the category. Of this, but he’s still playing footsy with these people. And and has, you know, John Bader, you know, the the the epitome of a country club Republican who wants to cut deals. He wanted to cut a a grand budget deal with Barack Obama on the deficit and social spending. And, you know, regardless to whether, you know, when the deal was good, bad, or indifferent, he wanted to do something and he couldn’t because the only reason he had power, a speaker, was because he had embraced the tea party people who were complete new the wounds and believe that Barack Obama was a secret socialist Muslim who wanted to destroy the country and you couldn’t cut a deal with them or you shouldn’t cut a deal with them.

And if you did, we’re gonna bounce you out of leadership. So, you know, it’s always been there. There have been times when when when when Republicans have just devoured it in nineteen sixty two, was in that booklet? No. No.

I’m done with Nixon. When Rich Nixon was running for governor of California in sixty two, he denounced the John Bird’s Society. And that but then in sixty eight and he lost I’m not saying lost because of that, But then in sixty eight, when he ran from president having supported civil rights the way that a lot of moderate Republicans had supported civil rights you know, as the party of Lincoln. In sixty eight, he got the nomination at the convention in part because he cut a deal with the white supremacist, segregationists like Straumann, and promised them no more pro nagilecraft. That was his words to John to John Mitchell is chief of staff at the time.

So he was the guy who, at one point, was the moderate Republican you know, in favor of civil rights for black Americans. And now he’s only he’s saving himself politically by getting Ben with Straumann. These are

series of bargains. Yeah. This is what I think is is so interesting because we’ve talked about the Faustian bargain with Trump, but but this was a there was a series of bargains going back to all of that. I mean, you know, with Richard Nixon and the Southern strategy, which has had such dramatic effect on the Republican Party. But I wanna go back to the Burch issue.

John Burks society because we had a piece in the bulwark. I think it was I don’t I don’t want to get wrong, but it would basically say, you know, the John Burksers have won. They are now kind of dominant in on the right, which is remarkable for many of us because famously William f Buckley junior excommunicated them for a while from the conservative movement in the nineteen sixty and it certainly seemed for many decades as if the John Burke Society had been confined to the fringes. They were still there, but but nobody took them seriously. So, again, we have this push and pull, you know, William O’Buckley Jr.

Using his tremendous cloud to be able to say we can’t have the any sunlight, we can’t have the birch’s, we can’t have the clan. We need to have these bulwarks against against the crazy you know, but after a series of these deals that you’ve been describing, and then also just the collapse of the guardrails. I mean, there’s no one like a buckley now. Who has the ability to say no to the crazies. Right?

I mean, no, that all of the incentives are to make common cause with the crazies. To to either ignore them or or actively actively support them. But but no one is standing up and saying the future of their a good party means we need to get rid of the margery tail of greens. The Alex Jones is we cannot tolerate people like Uber and Rover. No one is saying it, but then no one really can say it any longer.

You

know, on on the Buckley point, I would just commend listeners to read my section on that because it was true in sixty five. He kind of wrote the virtues out of the conservative movement. But in sixty one in sixty two, and up until that point, he tried to walk a fine line in which he was critical of the leader of the jumbo to side, but he didn’t want to throw the purchase out, and he was doing that in part in conjunction once he called a conspiracy, I guess, with with Barry Goldwater who wanted the burnchers on his side as his ground troops in his sixty four press. It’s a it’s he got to that point eventually, but how he got there, I think, is a fascinating story that that that it’s been lost a bit. But I but you’re you’re right.

I mean, when Reagan ran in for governor sixty sixty, wrote a letter to a colleague that we have to keep the coops at bay — Mhmm. — his words, and he was talking about virtues, extremists, and others. But once, you know, there are a lot of different turning points in history. Right? But I think, you know, Nuke Ginneridge and Rush Limbaugh started bringing back this idea of the paranoid style politics and that the Democrats were not just wrong.

They were the enemy, and they were not just, you know, doing bad things. They were involved in conspiracies. You know, Clinton’s Kelvin’s Foster. Rush Limbaugh was out there again again and saying that climate change was a furacy by Liberals and Democrats so they could take money away from you, and it was all hatched and it was a hoax. And Gingrich and others were promoting this way of thinking about politics in the nineties, and you can, you know, move it on up, you know, to Sarah Palin.

And, you know, listen, you know, I knew John McCain and I liked John in a lot of ways. I had some great moments on the campaign trail with him. And I think he, you know, was was the decent man who tried to work hard often to do the right thing, you know, like a politician in mind, you often didn’t, but often tried to do the right thing. Campaign finance reform is one good example. But picking Sarah Palin — Yeah.

— was in unleashing the furies. You know, the crazy element within the party that was always there, the the birchers, whatever you wanna call them, now had a place on the ticket. Nuke Enbridge spoke to them in the nineties, the anti government militias, and the NRA, which had a bulletin board with bomb making recipes and people encouraging the stockpiling of weapons for the civil war to come against the Democrats and Liberals. I mean, he encouraged all that stuff. Palen just put it right there on the ticket when you go to these rallies, which I did.

And people she basically called Barack Obama a terrorist, and people would say communist, kill them, kill them. And I think that what we’ve seen over the last twenty, thirty years is that the party I don’t know if it’s a chicken and egg type of thing. Right? That as the base has gotten more desirous of red meat, The party has offered more red meat and has become more accepting of that. So John Vayner bringing in the tea party, I mean, this all teased it up perfectly for Donald Trump.

Who says, you want Red Meat? I’m not gonna pretend anymore. I’m not gonna pretend to be a legislator and a statesman and also cut my side deals as as as as maybe Mitt Romney and others did in the past, I’m just gonna go straight with you with a bucket of bloody slop. And we’re gonna see And there was kind of an experiment in the twenty sixteen primary. We’re gonna see how this works.

And it turns out that there was an audience that had been somewhat condition and disease accepted. And, you know, that their grievances, their paranoia, their resentment, their fears, would be fed by Republicans and by people like Glen Beck on Fox who had been supported by Republicans. Never Glen Beck is saying Obama wants to put you in concentration camps, that is if you survive the death panels. I mean, he was literally saying that. And John Vayner, Sarah Palin and others Republicans were going on his show and validating him.

And so if you’re telling the Republican party that this is the state of reality Well, then when you come along and you get Bush and you say, I wanna work with Democrats to improve our education system, they look at you, like, are you crazy? Don’t you know what’s really happening out there? No.

They had released the the furies, and and it is interesting that, you know, to point to the moment where John McCain, who clearly knew better, who was not part of that culture. Made that deal that unleashed the fury. And this is what I found so interesting going back, you know, through your book, is these decisions made by people who in private would say these people are fucking nuts. And yet, they rationalized doing business with them. I really liked their story, which I’d I’d completely forgotten about back in like George h w Bush, you know, perhaps the most decent one of the most decent men ever in politics, at least that’s my view.

But In September nineteen ninety two, you you describe how the h w appeared before the Christian Coalition and lauded founder, Pat Robertson, for all the work you’re doing to restore the spiritual foundation of the nation. This was literally one year after Robertson had alleged the bush was part of a satanic plot. Literally. And Robertson claimed that Bush had uninvitedly carried out the mission of a cabal whose goal was nothing less than a new order for the human race under the domination of Lucifer and his followers. And even h w feels the need, okay, I gotta go in and I have to kiss, you know, crazy uncle, you know, Pat Robertson’s ring here.

And, of course, the Christian coalition played a major role in putting new language in power in nineteen ninety four and then helped rescue George w when McCain threatened to defeat it. And again, George w being a perfect example of this. You know, in private, he would say what a bunch of loons of these folks were, how frustrated he was with them and yet they made one of the many, many, many Faustian bargains that as you put it unleash the furies. You

know, it’s it is interesting because the the the George Bush’s are very similar in terms of of of the history that we’re talking about. Right? The guys who are, you know, country clubbed Republicans and and not crazy people, not extremists themselves, both and not even that ideological in many ways. And yet, to when they recognize they had to cow towel to crazy people. Now, Pat Robertson’s not just crazy.

He writes this book called The New World Order. Yes. That was hundreds of thousands of copies It’s a bestseller, competitively. Lives. Every conspiracy theory almost it’s ever been told.

The Illuminati, the Mason’s, secret societies, a cultist working with communists, and the bilateral commission, and the Federal Reserve, and the Rothchild family. Don’t forget the anti Semitic part of this. And they’re all working together to impose a world totalitarian dictatorship be for what? To help Lucifer and Satan. This is all Satan’s doing.

I mean, it’s very he’s not he’s he’s not very metaphorical. He’s literal. No. And then George h w Bush is helping them do this. And then you go to this convention of, you know, thousands of Christian coalition people and you praise Robertson, You’re authenticating, you’re validating, you’re saying, this is a fellow who needs to be listened to, and so the hundreds of thousands and millions of people who watch them on TV, you know, are getting the message from the Republican Party leadership that you should listen and pay heed to Pat Robertson.

And then when George w Bush runs for president, eight years later, and he actually, you know, I would be a compassionate conservative. He’s trying to separate himself from the getting rid of Republicans and some of the far right hardcore social conservatives that, you know, that you might equate with the Christian Coalition. But then as soon as he gets into trouble, When McCain wins New Hampshire, we have to Bush one Iowa, and it looks like he might roll Bush. Bush runs to South Carolina He goes to Bob Jones University, which at that point in time, in the year two thousand, banned interracial dating, interracial marriage, and was still preaching that Catholicism was connected to Satan. And he gives a speech.

He endorses, he validates They, you know, this this racist institution. He, you know, brings in the Christian coalition, Pat Roberson, and his forces that are very big in South Carolina. All to beat that John McCain. And then he doesn’t apologize for going to Bob Jones University until, like, a month or two later, after he’s won the South Carolina primary, and he’s gotten what he needed out of these people. So it’s highly cynical, but also I think what it does

is it continues to reinforce their standing with their party and their view of reality. Yes. But, you know, you you mentioned this as cynical. They will of course rationalize this because politicians always have the capacity to get rationalize this. As, you know, politics ain’t beanbag.

And this is what you need to do to win elections. And I think the assumption was at the time that you would trot these people out around in time. You would pat them on the head. You would ride their votes, hopefully, to victory. And then once safely elected, you could put them back in the class could shove them back in the closet.

And by the way, that was the assumption. Of course, the crazies realized what was happening, which also is, you know, how the furies were released because they they they understood that they were being used and then push to the side. But I think that the assumption on the part of most Republican leaders was that the center would always hold that, yeah, you’d have the crazies that were out there. But in the end, it would be a bush or it would be a mccain or it would be a romney. That they wouldn’t they would be the recessive gene that we’d be able to keep them in the backroom.

So what happened in twenty sixteen and what happened since and it feels like it’s accelerating, which is why that your title is so timely, the American psychosis, is that all those theories, all the crazies that everybody had I said back when what I meant was the basement. You know, I sort of kept them in the basement. You know, they were they were the people that would, you know, you when when, you know, polite visitors would come, you would make sure that door was was locked. They’re out and they’re dominant. And so I guess the question is and and I think you you you you acknowledge this in the book as well.

Donald Trump is not the cause for this. This was a preexisting condition. So I mean, Trump obviously is the is the vehicle in the engine to, you know, unlock the the door to the basement. But how did this fringe now become so dominant even, I mean, even if if Donald Trump disappears tomorrow, this is what the Republican party has become. Right?

I mean, the public Republican party has been completely classified And there is no ability for these reasonable voices, you know, the Liz Chinese of the world to stand up and say, by the way, this is crazy. This is this is on patriotic. So how did that happen? I mean, there’s so many different factors here, but what was the switch for these folks that had always been around? But never had been dominant, who who had been encouraged by these series of Thalasty and Bargains.

How did

we get to this moment? When I was working on the book, I tripped over this quote, which I used for my Epigram at the very start of the book. It’s from Katherine Ann Porter who was a well known journalist and thirty, forty, fifties, into the sixties, I guess, or even later. And and a and a novelist, you wrote a book called ship of fools that people might remember. And the line is this.

We know that the furies do not come uninvited. So, you know, right, the idea you know, we’re not here because of accidents. Right? We we’re and and the way I look you know, you said you’re you’re asking, like, what flipped the switch? And I see this as a continuation of things getting more and more intense giving the crazies as you call them more and more leeway.

And, you know, once you start feeding them red meat, they want more and more red meat. And it’s hard to go back to cheese and crackers. And I do think that, you know, there are a lot of, you know, obviously, there’s no simple answer. But the development of the Internet and the information revolution, which allowed extreme voices to coalesce and find one another and allowed you know, it took away the ability of the mainstream media to keep some extreme voices to the side or or or or somewhat suppressed or at least muffled a bit. I mean, it used to be that, you know, I’m thinking it’s like, you know, if Jeb Bush had run twenty years earlier, the mainstream media would have basically just said he’s the guy and and the other voice is talking about Trump or other more extreme candidates would not get as much play.

They couldn’t, you know, get the traction that they could get under Trump with the ability with the particularly, I think, with the rise of conservative media that started creating its own reality. I mean, this starts with Fox in the late nineties, and I worked at Fox in the late nineties and early odds. And I know I thought it’s ideological operation. I was, you know, one of the few liberal voices they had. But what I would go on Fox, I would argue policy and politics.

With John Casek, Tony Snow, and I loved it. These guys were right. Maybe, you know, to me, they were far right, but there were, you know, conservative Republicans but we were talking about real things and not talking about and not arguing that the sky was whether the sky was purple or blue. But Fox obviously has morphed more into this echo chamber that, you know, cow towels and caters to the more extreme elements. I I think maybe Glenn Beck, you know, sort of who went beyond rush limbaugh on craziness.

Sort of steered it in that direction and and the and the rise of the tea party. So there were a number of factors to Charlie. I I think rush flowball has a lot to do with this. And the rise of conservative talk radio when when we’re being extreme and being, you know, I think in polite, and not having civil discourse and and vilifying and demonizing the enemy. I mean, there was there was no mass media of the left that de that demonized and and decivolized discourse the way that Rush Limbaugh did.

I mean, whatever was like listening to NPR, when you get both sides and everyone’s very polite, that’s what they listen to when they drive. You know, rush to allow developing this audience of millions sent a sign to republican candidates and to other people in the Republican or conservative media world. And I think he owns a large share of this. Now ultimately, the the responsibility is the American people who who fought for this because if, you know, if he didn’t develop an audience, really done anywhere. Right?

But he found an audience and he made that audience, I think worse than it might otherwise have been.

Well, I agree with that. But also looking back over the last ten, fifteen, twenty years, for many many years, Republican politicians had to at least, you know, acknowledge mainstream opinion. They were held in somewhat check. They felt the need to police themselves to not go too far, not sound completely crazy because they they they needed to, you know, speak to a general calculation. Now they no longer have that kind of accountability right now.

I mean, someone like a ronda scientist. In order to understand him, you have to understand that he knows that the mainstream, the the traditional media has no power over him, that he is speaking to a world that will never hold him accountable for false statements or extreme statements or any of that. So the entire incentive structure has changed so dramatically. I mean, I watch politicians who had to sort of keep an eye on the fact checkers for a while. They they they recognize that if they associated with with like extremist radicles or, you know, holocaust deniers that they would pay a tremendous price for it.

And and then suddenly, you know, their their long held fantasy, what if there was no media watchdog. What if there was no eyes looking over your shoulder of, you know, saying that, okay, you’ve you’ve gone too far. And so now all they need to do is to pander to that particular base. And it’s changed the entire culture of politics. So what I’m trying to get at is, you know, part of the growing insensitivity to, you know, how far you’ve gone is a result of this, and I was just reading a tweet from Philip Bump from the Washington Post yesterday, you know, the beauty of the internet is that it brings people together.

The downside is that some of those people are idiots. And bringing them together just convinces them that they aren’t idiots. So what’s been happening is is that you’ve had this sort of doom loop where the the extremists in the nutjobs surround themselves with other extremists in nutjobs. And after a while, they don’t realize they’re extremists in nutjobs. They just think they’re they’re brave or they’re victims.

Well, you know, they they think they’re protecting democracy when they sack the capital. And don’t forget there is a money side

to this too, and that a lot of people have figured out how to make a buck. Office through, you know, direct email solicitations and, you know, the the fundraising you know, you you get all the fundraising notes that I’m sure I do. And, you know, they are as dire as anything I’ve ever seen about, you know, how the the the Liberals and Democrats are far left radical communists who want to destroy America. And so you know, that and that’s sort of what every Republican is saying now. It it obviously they’re obviously doing that because it works.

Because they have these ones. You know, they’re they’re they’re they’re getting the money returns. They can see this. And that is you know, playing on people’s fears, but also reinforcing those fears. And that’s sort of the dangerous loop that I think the Republican Party has been in since the McCarthy period.

You know, are they, you know, creating the fear or are they just playing to the fear. And I think it’s both are happening. And, you know, you started to you know, I think new gingards came along and and really started in the in the nineties in in a big way. And it’s just taken off since then. And it’s the type of thing that it’s very hard to figure out how to pull a one eighty here.

Once you’ve told people that the president of the United States is a secret socialist trying to destroy the America you love and people believe that. You know, you can’t go back to arguing about a housing policy. You know, you can’t say, well, should the capital gains rate be eighteen percent or twenty one percent? No. No.

You just told me that, you know, that the that this guy wants to destroy Christianity.

Okay. So explain this one thing to me. Only these shifts. I I I I I I see the roots of them. I know where they they they came from.

I obviously, you know, miscalculated on how influential they would be. But explain to me the fascination with Russia. Because the one thing that I wouldn’t have seen coming Is the is that America first that comes to now America last Tucker Carlson’s fascination with Vladimir Putin. How did the right learn to love a KGB thug? I

think there are

maybe

two two maybe other overlapping factors. You know, very quickly, because this is not the current book, but my last book, correct me a lad. You know, looking at Donald Trump and Russia. I think Donald Trump just wants, you know, loves strong men and he is envious and and and and aspires of Putin and aspires to be Putin like or Erdogan like like. And so he all and he wanted to do business there and it was in his interest to to talk up Putin because it was good for business.

I think he had a very particular set of interests that drove him into the arms — That’s Donald Trump. — that’s Donald Trump. Now for the conservative movement and, you know, Republicans at large, some Republicans at all, I think it’s they look at Putin and they too want a strong man in what they consider to be this cultural political civil war. The night before Russia started its brutal barbaric invasion of Russia. Steve Bannon was doing his podcast.

And he was saying, we love Putin. I mean, he doesn’t fight rainbow flags. He’s not woke. I mean, they like him because they see him as you know, as as being somewhat of a right wing Christian nationalist who’s against gay people and, you know, and woneness. And they would like to see that applied here to the United States.

And they also, I think, you know, in the in the last two years, It’s the enemy of the enemy I think with Tucker Carlson. He he falls into the category I just mentioned, but also anybody who gets bite in a hard time. Yeah.

I think that’s a key. Yeah.

I mean, can you imagine he went on the air of a few nights ago and said rush towards what winning a global war? I mean, it’s I mean, I I did a story

a couple of psychosis. Yeah. Yeah. I did a story a couple

months ago. You might recall in which I got my hands on, you know, during Russian, I got translated. Memos that the Kremlin put out to media, Russian controlled state media, telling them, you know, talking points about the, you know, the shift of the war started about how to cover the war. And one of the talking points was to use more sound bikes and clips of Tucker Carlson. Now if if that for me, I would at least, you know, try to keep it keep my love affair with Putin and by rooting for Russia a little bit on the down low here.

But but in Russia, they recognize them as being a a propagander plus for them. And so I think it’s anti bot it’s, you know, the enemy of the enemy, so the anti botan, but also they want a putin like response here. To cultural shifts that they oppose. You know,

I I I wrote about this in my news letter this morning. Will the US abandon Ukraine could happen, obviously intentionally provocative. And and my argument is they know Putin has gotten a lot wrong. He’s made a lot of miscalculations, but I think that at some point he undoubtedly has to be thinking if I can just stretch this out, if I can outlast the Biden administration, Trump two point o would be a completely different world. You know, if Donald Trump goes back into the the the White House, America’s support for Ukraine could could essentially flip a given Trump’s obviously, you know, personal fascination with letter of Putin.

But also, now the much of the right and the right this this matter right, this isolation is right, is the aid of the Republican Party right now. I mean, Reagan foreign policy has been completely abandoned. You know, people who who, you know, think, well, well, Tucker Carlson doesn’t matter. He matters if Vladimir Putin is sitting in the Kremlin and he thinks that this is the authentic voice of the American Conservative Movement, which may be the ruling party in a couple of years. It gives aid in comfort of Vladimir Putin who thinks that if he can pick off the Republican Party and the Republican Party can get back in the Oval Office, then then then then he will have succeeded in well, he will have succeeded and perhaps succeeded in breaking NATO.

So, I mean, the stakes are are massive here. And and and Tucker Carlson clearly is an indication that he’s telling Russians, look, this is what American conservatives are thinking. This is what the world is thinking, this is what Donald Trump restored to the presidency would do about us and about Ukraine. You know, I hadn’t

thought of it that way, Charlie. I think that’s a very very smart sharp point that I will steal from you and write about myself, dude. I I but I I I I I think, you know, it is, you know, that it I could see that being part of Putin’s calculation because certainly, you know, he’s getting his butt kicked this week But, you know, a military that strong should have the ability to at least log it through and, you know, even as a stalemate. And and and maintain that. You know, and as, you know, again, I have to reference my my last book, which I co wrote with my colleague of Russia related, you say what would happen if, you know, if Donald Trump got back into office for Vladimir Putin.

Well, Donald Trump got into office the first time in part because of the help from Vladimir Putin. I mean, Putin worked actively. It was one it wasn’t the only factor, but it was one of several factors that helped Trump get elected. So one could see him doing that again. Right?

That that could happen that way. So I do think there obviously then is this danger. I mean, what what happens if they come in I mean, I know I’ll say this to, you know, people who have heard me talk about Trump before may have heard this particular line. But I’ve long said that there are three things that motivate Donald Trump. Revenge, and revenge.

And they, despite, but that’s the cousin of revenge. And if he should get back in office, and even if there are house Republicans who do his bidding, take over the house in in a couple months, revenge is gonna be on the top of the to do list. And if you look at people who he doesn’t like, What is this guy named President Zelensky who, you know — Oops. — helped to get impeached the first time. Right?

He has no love lost for Zelensky and Ukraine. And he still believes he’s promoted his crazy conspiracy theory that Ukraine was really behind the hacking of the DNC in twenty sixteen, not Russia, and that they hid the servers so that that could not be proven, and thus Trump’s victory was tainted by, you know, it’s a great point. False allegation that Russia and intervene when it was of course, not a false allegation. So he really doesn’t like Zelensky and Ukraine. So if he comes into office, he is not gonna be of a mind to do anything to help them.

Right? In fact, he will be out there actively looking to use this power to hurt them. I just don’t think that can

be overstated. I agree with him. No. The book is American Psychosis. It is out today in historical investigation of how the Republican Party went crazy, David corn is the DC Bureau Chief of Mother Jones, also writes the newsletter.

Our land, David. Thank you for coming on the podcast today. It was great. Always

great to talk to you, Charlie. Thank you very much. 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. We’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll do this all over again.

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