Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, well, discuss some things that stood out. And it was all a lie how the republican party became Donald Trump. The 2020 book by longtime republican political consultant and strategist Stuart Stephens, which essentially asserts that the bending of the knee to Trump brings into question whether Republicans ever really cared about principles like personal responsibility and law and order and fiscal responsibility.
Hello. Welcome to the call like I see it podcast. I'm James Keys, and rolling with me today is a man who's always willing to help out someone whose pants are on fire. Tunde Ogon, Lana Tunde, are you ready to show off your skills as a fireman today?
[00:00:55] Speaker B: Yeah. And I'm glad to say I'm not a liar, liar. So that's pretty cool.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Well, you have to put the fire out on yourself first before.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I wouldn't survive.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: If you don't come with a fire, then that's good.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: That's good. All right.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: All right. Now, before we get started, if you enjoy the show, I ask that you hit subscribe, hit like on your YouTube or on your podcast platform. Doing so really helps the show out. Now, recording this on August 20, 2024. And we continue our culture series today by doing some reading between the lines in the 2020 book. It was all a lie, how the Republican Party became Donald Trump by Stuart Stevens. In this book, Stevens, you know, the veteran GOP strategist lays out how the complete submission of the Republican Party to the former President Trump was more of a culmination of longstanding trends rather than some sudden departure from what the party was about and discusses how he realized this after working for decades to get Republicans elected.
Tunde, I want to get us started. What stands out to you in this central message? You know, that it was all a lie, the, it being the principles Republicans used to say that they were all about. And, you know, also this idea that Trump was kind of the logical conclusion of what the Republican Party became, became, became over 50 years.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: I say this with a smile.
I thought it was a really good book, and I was glad to read it because it confirmed to me that I'm not crazy.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: Confirmation bias.
[00:02:28] Speaker B: Yeah. So for sure.
No, because I thought it was. Listen, I think there's an arc to draw for the last 44 years from 1980 because I think the republican presidents prior to that were kind of the old school world and politician, all that. But starting with Ronald Reagan and the new way that the Republican Party presented itself, I think that Stuart Stephens is correct and draws a great arc as to how the party got to where it is and really became the cult of one man. Thats why I love the title, the subtitle of how the Republican Party became Donald Trump. So it's a pretty good telling of that arc of that 44 year period. I mean, he goes back further, which I'll know, we'll discuss. But I mean, the real thing that to me just kind of stuck out of all of it. And I joke to say I'm not crazy because these are trends like you're saying and things that we've seen our whole lives. And I've been a registered independent since my early twenties, since I started being interested in politics. And I got my first, you know, went to get my voter registration. And one reason for me was I believe in America first. I didn't want to pick a party and then feel like I got to always go to that, even if there were things where they wanted direction over time that I didn't agree with. And so in my journey, I flirted with both parties. And, you know, I checked out some democratic stuff. There was a time after the Obama inauguration that I decided, hey, let me go check out what the Republicans are about. And I went to some stuff locally that Broward County Republican election Commission meetings. I went with my neighbor and I really checked it out. And that was when the Tea party was coming up. And so for me, his book was able to kind of give me a view behind the curtain that I wasn't able to see because I wasn't within the deep kind of guts of the party like he was. But in reading his book, there were a lot of things I saw in that 2010 through 2012 period when I was actively kind of curious and really going into republican circles, the reason I wasn't able to fully go in and the things that I saw there and some of the contradictions I saw were really what he, I think, really was able to explain in the book. And so that's why for me, I started with the joke that felt good. I'm not crazy. Like, I couldn't go all the way because of certain things that he confirmed. A lot of it there.
[00:04:58] Speaker A: I'll say this. I mean, it's, now you're a fair minded person. Like, you try, actively try to be fair, you know, and, which is an honorable thing to some people, to many people. But, and I think that what he did, and I would piggyback on what you're saying, it kind of gave you some comfort in the sense that the things you're seeing, I think I saw things as well and so a lot of things he talks about I was aware of, and it's okay. Yeah. But as a fair minded person, you almost resist the temptation to say, all of that stuff is connected, and all of that stuff leads to this similar conclusion, because it's like, oh, well, I can't prove that, you know, there's this going on. There's that going on, but I can't prove that it's a concerted effort to use this to drive people further away from the mainstream or, you know, to kind of isolate people in a way that they'll feel like I'm the only source of truth or, you know, all of these kind of trends, the things that you notice. And so he actually says, actually, yes, all of those things that you noticed, they were all connected. I was on the inside doing this, and we were, you know, some people like me, we were trying to not tap into these dark sides. And other, other of us were running right to him and recognized how much they could lead to power. And so his account from the inside of these, of his experience, you know, and like I said, he belatedly recognized this, this as an overall thing and then went back and looked through his life experience and counts this through the book. Oh, okay. Yeah, this is what was happening here. I can see how this happened. And in a way, he, he presents this as almost like he reck, he holds up his hand and says, yes, yes, I'm guilty of, you know, like, being a part of this. But he almost looks like he's looking at it, like he feels the guilt himself about not recognizing it earlier and that he only recognized it when, you know, like, when it went this direction with Donald Trump. And because he talks about how these principles, like the things I laid out earlier, you know, personal responsibility, law and order, those are things that he truly believed in. And so when people gave lip service to that stuff, he actually was like, yes, this is the kind of stuff we need, that we need to have. And I would say, yes, those are all concepts that we should have in society and that we should have. People talking about the kind of the betrayal, so to speak, is just that the people who were talking about that, it was really just about power. It was about. And, you know, it was about stuff other than what they say they were talking about, because otherwise, you couldn't abandon it that quickly for one person to come along, you know?
[00:07:24] Speaker B: And I want to give Stuart Stevens a lot of credit. I mean, he shows a lot of humility as a man and a human being in the way that he writes the book, so, you know, he doesn't.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: Call himself an imperfect messenger, you know. Yeah, I'm an imperfect messenger here, if you want to say that, yeah, I took the money and did all this work, and now I'm betraying the people that, you know, actually are in the office and had to make the tough decisions, whereas I got to, I was off once the election happened, and I got to go chill. He's like, you're right. I was that I was the guy who took the money, got people elected, and then didn't have to make any hard decisions. But there's still a level of honesty that comes along with what he's saying.
And I think one point, I want to keep us moving, but the idea that he points out that our America in the United States is the only society in the world that was built on conscious human intent as opposed to some kind of tribal coalition or some kind of, hey, we're going to take this over and there's going to be a family type of thing, a family dynasty or, you know, like, that's typically a lot of times how countries are set up, you know, and then I give you modern times with third world countries, and there'll be all types of factors that are going into that being set up by other countries, but not for. Not for the conscious intent of creating a secular society that is supposed to be governed based on principles of reason and debate and all that stuff. So the idea that our country is set up like that, unlike most countries, I think what you see here is kind of the friction between kind of our humanity and how we want things to be run, or many of us want things to be run, or many of us, how we feel comfortable with things being run and this kind of abstraction that the United States is supposed to be, you know, where, hey, we're supposed to hold above everything some document, you know, like, that's not normal, you know, in terms of. Again, but that's where I get to kind the idea of american exceptionalism that is literally an exception to how countries are founded and run is some reverend is reverence for some document called a constitution to say, hey, this is what we're going to hold up on high. And so it follows that that's not going to be something that's easy for everyone to maintain over the courses of hundreds of years, you know, so right now we can see where it's like, okay, yeah, the Constitution is not the end all, be all for everybody. The issue that we're seeing, and this is what he's pointing out is that we've had a coalition or a party coalesce. One of two political parties coalesce around the idea of let's put a man above that. Let's, you know, if a man does something that's unconstitutional, there's something wrong with constitution. If a man loses an election, there's something wrong with voting, you know, and so I think that that's kind of the warning sign that he's raising for people who do still consider the constitution to be what we are going to still try to hold high, which, again, is that conscious human intent that America was founded on. So on our second part, I did want to look back.
He goes back even to the 1940s, but he really talks about how the transition from George Wallace, who wasn't necessarily a Republican, who was more of a dixiecrat, to the, the Barry Goldwater, that transition time period, civil rights movement and so forth in the sixties, is really, really picks it up and how that leads into some of the coalition building that you talked about earlier. But in terms of where the lie came from, if he's saying it was all a lie, you know, like, so in terms of where the lie came from and how it manifested, you know, he gave, he gives several different areas in society where this type of thing is Isdev being perpetuated or, you know, is being enabled. What stood out to you in that, you know, and in terms of the different areas where he's looking at like, oh, yeah, well, this is how, this is how it happened, or this is, you know, like in order to make people buy, get people to buy in on this, you know, this is what, this is what had to be done.
[00:11:13] Speaker B: Well, I think what he does a great job of is showing kind of different prongs that led into where we are today. Because I want to just read two quick quotes from the book. One is he says Republicans, quote, quote, Republicans have built a political ecosphere that thrives on deceit and lies. It is an industrialized sort of deceit that is unique to the republican party. And then he says conservatives have been cultivating a country within a country, a sort of virtual secession from the United States. And I thought that was a very good way to put, because I used to, I was doing this starting during the Obama administration. I would watch the state of the Union, and then I would watch Fox right after. And then I'll watch other channels like CNN, NBC. And it was like the Fox anchors and the people talking there were like in a totally different world. And what they were talking to their viewers about than everyone else. And that's what I think was necessary to create this unholy alliance of that country club Republican, you know, the really the billionaire types and all this, who didn't really have much in common with the Dixiecrat types from the sixties, you know, the ones that were disaffected with Lyndon Johnson, the civil rights movement. And I think that's where it fell apart after, you know, the Bush administration. And in those pieces, it picked up and became Donald Trump over time. So one of the things that notes I put down for myself was the Dominion lost something you gotta do.
[00:12:39] Speaker A: That was a very insightful thing just real quick because that union didn't really have anything in common. Like didn't that union, that billionaire or ultra wealthy and very selfish, hey, cut my taxes as low as possible. I don't care if we run huge deficits as a country. I don't care if we have a huge debt. And the former Dixiecrats who Nixon and the Republican Party courted after the Civil Rights act and so forth was signed by Lyndon Johnson. And then also once you get into towards the eighties and you got, you know, the, the religious, you know, like the religious crowd, the religion that want to, again, put an imprint on the government. Not just that want to be religious, but actually want to put their religion on the government, they didn't really share things in common. And so once the uneasy alliance kind of broke up, they all like, basically there was no principle binding them. So the principle became someone like Donald Trump, you know, and that's kind of what he talks about there.
[00:13:39] Speaker B: Well, and, and that's the thing because when he's talking about these separate ecosystems, really to keep members of that party that want to live in a different reality than where the United States has been going.
I think that was proven in the Dominion lawsuit where Fox News paid almost a billion dollars as a legal settlement so that they didn't have to go to trial and probably be stuck on the hook paying more.
And that also is another example of why the party itself, in terms of that elite status, folks like you said, they don't have much in common with the populace, right, the people at the bottom. So that's why, again, and he talks a little bit about this in the book, the idea of manipulating the courts so on and so forth. Because the reality is a lot of the ideas in today's republican party, maybe not the party of 30, 40, 50 years ago, are unpopular to the mass of Americans and they have a lot of their own voters and constituents kind of in this suspense, this suspended reality, where they keep trying to tell, that's the whole thing of make America great again. They keep trying to tell them, hey, back then it was great. Let's not look at the details back then. But I'm just telling you it was better because I know you don't like all these people that we keep showing you on the tv here, whether it's people coming through the border, whether it's Black lives Matter, whether it's whatever. Right? And so that's what I was saying is. So your point earlier made me realize, as I was winding up that thought that that speaks to, that's when he. The title of this, it was all a lie. That's when I started thinking, okay, that's how they were able to fool their base about things like deficits, about family values, like you're saying about small government even. Because whenever republicans have taken up control of government in my lifetime, from George Bush with the Patriot act to Donald Trump with a lot of his stuff, it was all about how the government's gonna actually get bigger and put their hands on more american students.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Be a bigger part of your life.
[00:15:44] Speaker B: Yeah. Look at their appeal of Roe v. Wade and how they control how women, even with endoscopic pregnancies, had to get that word right that, you know, just for medical care, can't even hear. Why? Cause they wanna control what women do and control this and control that.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: They want to listen to your phone calls and they want to build these.
[00:16:01] Speaker B: So how do you get enough Americans to buy in to the idea that the people at the top of that party actually want to control and not go on the american, do a project? 2025, let's call it. And it's because you need to deceive these viewers with an ecosystem. And I want to hand you back on this one, because another great thing he does in the book is compared Donald Trump with kind of an evangelical preacher from the eighties, Jimmy Swagger type.
[00:16:29] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah.
[00:16:30] Speaker B: Televangelist. Sorry. And I thought that was great because we talk about the eighties, right? And saying that, yeah, this is a population then the republican base that was kind of primed for this kind of guy because they've had 40 years, two generations of also being treated that way in religion.
[00:16:48] Speaker A: No, the comparison was very interesting because it talked about how the televangelists did not lead the lives that they were telling all the people that they were supposed to be leading or that they said were the right. They established them. So they were, you know, you're supposed to be humble, though. They're not humble. You know, there's. You're supposed to live a certain way, and they don't do that. You know, they'll have, you know, many wives and, you know, be super rich off of, you know, the money that they're making from their, their, you know, their constituents and, you know, they're, their appearance, you know, is going to be modified in very ways, you know, various ways and so forth. So it was. Yeah, it was a priming in a sense, but also it was just the. The need for authenticity was kind of diminished. If you get and tell somebody what they want to hear. And in this crowd, if you tell them what they want to hear. And, I mean, a big part of this that you have to mention when you discuss it is just. And this is from Stuart Stevens, is that the party, once it went down the road, you know, at the direction of people like Pat Buchanan, you know, and so forth from. This is from the seventies of, okay, we're going to court the Dixiecrats who are dissatisfied. The Dixiecrats used to be the democratic. In the democratic party, the segregationist Jim Crow. That party was the Democratic Party. Lyndon Johnson, when he signed the Civil Rights act, declared he just lost the south for a decade or a generation, excuse me, by doing that, because he recognized the Dixiecrats were all out on that. Even though Lyndon Johnson was a southern Democrat, he wasn't in that same kind of mindset at that time, at least they didn't have a party. The Pat Buchanan's, Richard Nixon's of the world recognized, like, hey, let's go get them and bring them into the Republican Party. So when they did that, what was learned, what was recognized, what ended up happening, basically, is that the party became about the political messaging. And Stevens talked about this. The political messaging became very targeted towards white voters because the party was overwhelmingly white at that time, which was, you know, that's just the way it was based on the constituency they had. And so they got better and better and more refined at going in that direction, and they kind of lost everything else, so to speak, and that it isolated them in a way that left them exposed to things like this, you know? So the other thing I wanted to get to was Stevens as a messenger, you know? And I know you might have something else just to throw real quick, but I do want to move us to Stevens as a messenger. So any comments on what I had just thrown in? But also just what are your thoughts on, you know, get to the Stevens as a messenger.
[00:19:11] Speaker B: Yeah. So just to finish your thought, I just wanted to say, because you used a very important word about Pat Buchanan courting the disaffected segregationist for, to try and get them over to the Republican Party so they could earn power. And I think it's a great point you make because it reminds me that we all have choices Pat Buchanan could accord at anybody. And one of the feelings that, again, I love the title of this guy's book because it was all a lie that I felt as a, since a kid, it was all a lie was I never understood how these people that call themselves evangelical Christians and the republican party would always spouse that, but I would never see them in black churches because I always knew of black Americans who are Baptists and Methodists as some of the most culturally conservative Americans. And I used to be as a kid wonder, well, how come they so much into Christianity? How come they not over here making these black people republican in these conservative churches? And as I got older, that's, I mean, I realized, oh, I get it, because of the whole racial element that we talked about. And so that goes back to my beginning comment to say when I reading his book and he's out there kind of doing a mea culpa, telling us what people really think in a party, I was like, oh, yeah, I wasn't crazy when I was a kid, you having those feelings actually, where I was being a rational child observing this stuff, but I didn't yet understand all those nuances.
[00:20:32] Speaker A: It's the first time, I think it's worth noting. It's not the first time. Like, and this is like for FDR, and we've, we've mentioned this in past shows, FDR, because he was a Democrat and he had to rely on the Dixiecrats in the south to get things done in his government. He, there were many things he did during the new deal as far as cutting black people out, you know, taking them out of various, you know, social programs and things like that, making it more difficult.
[00:20:55] Speaker B: You've, you've done, you've, originally, blacks were not allowed to participate in Social Security. That's one.
[00:21:01] Speaker A: I mean, but there's even more than that. But the, he had to make, even.
[00:21:04] Speaker B: Though they paid taxes, just, yeah, yeah.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: Much to the chagrin, actually, of his wife, he had to make concessions on that to get that stuff through Congress. And so it's not the first time that a party has kind of been stuck with what they could do from an equality standpoint because they recognized the Dixiecrats as a major constituency in their voting bloc. And so when Lyndon Johnson said, enough. I'm signing the Civil Rights act. I'm going to make all these people mad. And the republican party then jumped in and said, hey, we'll take you guys. They then box themselves in, into that same box, and they've been boxed in. And that's the trajectory, basically, when he says that, you know, this, that's a key factor in all this as well. But again, we don't want to get bogged down in that point, but the history behind that is fascinating. So, yeah, so Stevens, as the messenger, like, does he come off to you, you know, like this is coming from him being guilty or patriotism or maybe even vindictiveness? Like, what do you think about him as a messenger here?
[00:21:57] Speaker B: No, I think, I think, you know, it's a rare time, I don't know the guy, but it's a rare time that he appears like a genuine, like I said, mia culpa, kind of a apology to himself and his family and, you know, in the world for his involvement. And I think his realization that he was involved in something that ended up in a direction where it is right that the country's hurt now by the direction that the Republican Party's gone in this fealty to one man. And I even think just, just, you know, drawing this arc that we've been drawing, I think he recognized that what we just talked about in the last couple minutes happened again, this, this choice of who you're going to court. And that was, again, during the Obama era. The Tea Party was kind of the last remnants of the dixiecrat energy in the United States. And the party did its autopsy talks about that when Rice Priebus was the chair of the party. And part of the autopsy in 2012 was that, you know, they needed to appeal more to minorities and stuff like that.
[00:23:01] Speaker A: They need to make a broader tent, you know, a broader tent more and more, not limit their focus onto particular voters. You know, they're just white voters or whatever. They need to try to broaden it out. Yeah, that was exactly.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: And so what happened is the party chose not to and went the direction of Donald Trump, which again, appears now to be, again, a much smaller coalition of that energy than it was even back in 2012. But of course, the ecosystems make all of them feel like that. They are the larger majority of the american people.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: And don't undersell that because it was like you try to broaden your tent or you stay narrow and you then put your energy into voter suppression. And so 2016, like the voter suppression efforts, were what took over and how many less? It was an election where less minorities or at least black people voted in the previous election because of efforts to keep him from voting.
[00:23:51] Speaker B: So interesting that.
[00:23:52] Speaker A: That choice. You know? Any details? That choice?
[00:23:55] Speaker B: Yeah. And so I think to answer, you know, the question directly about. About him, I think that's where I see a couple things. Number one, just to answer directly, I don't think that the. Anything vindictive thoughts or sentiment were in the book. Cause he made a point to say, I'm not naming names of people that I think went off the rails. I'm not. This isn't a gotcha kind of book. And so I think that that was good that he did that, because had he done start pointing fingers at people he didn't like anymore and all that, it would have made it one of those books. So I think it would have made.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: It more salacious, though, you know, which might have made it more popular. This is a New York Times bestseller, though. But nonetheless, I'm not saying it right now.
[00:24:31] Speaker B: We don't need that. We need. We need. We need reality.
But then the other thing, I think, which is interesting because he talks about his upbringing. He talks about his character stuff a bit. And before preparing for today, I also wanted to watch him in a few interviews on YouTube because I thought, let me. Let me see just how he talks about the book and himself. So some of this might not be directly from the book about his personal history, but that first campaign you talk about, he ran against, he supported a Republican in Mississippi because Stuart Stevens is from Jackson, Mississippi. So I also think as an american and as a white american, he comes from a part of the country that gives him a real kind of bona fides and a real cultural leg to stand on because he's a true southerner. I mean, you come from Mississippi as a white dude. I mean, you're really from the heart of the Confederacy. So for him to really, again, have this kind of observation and looking back, I think means a lot just as an American. And so. But he, like we talked about. And for those, I mean, it's very interesting, the history of american politics that may not know that prior to the sixties, the entire south and the segregationists were all Democrats like you alluded to FDR having to work some deals out with them in the thirties or needing them and getting them on board to work things out in the New Deal. And so what he was doing was he represented the republican nominee for, I think, I can't remember if it was Congress or Senate in Mississippi at the time, because Stuart Stevens parents were not segregationists. He didn't say that they were staunch integration as going to Marxism, but they just didn't believe that you should treat other people like the way that blacks were being treated. So to me, what this represents, to me, this Stuart Stevens writing this book, it's dissimilar to when I saw Mitt Romney in a Black Lives Matter march in 2020. And a reporter stuck a microphone in his face and said, why are you in this Black Lives Matter march? And he looked her straight in the eyes and said, because black lives Matter. That's why I was shocked when I saw Mitt Romney do that, because I didn't know Mitt Romney was that kind of guy, because I just know of him as the kind of the Wall street guy from the eighties that became the governor of Massachusetts and ran for president. I always knew of him as Bain capital private equity guy. But what I learned about him is that his dad, George Romney, ran for president in 1964 and actually walked off the convention floor because he didn't like Barry Goldwater's stance on segregation. And so what I think Stuart Stevens represents and what he discusses a little bit is a lot of things do go back to how we were raised at the end of the day. And I think people like Stuart Stevens or like me and you that were raised not to be bigots. We didn't have parents at a dinner table talking about these people over here or f those people.
[00:27:24] Speaker A: He talked, he also talked about how his dad made hard choices, you know, professionally, and told him, you always have a choice in terms of the types of things that you're willing to participate in. And, you know, that kind of values, you know, like, it's something that, you know, is, will stick with someone.
[00:27:38] Speaker B: That's what I'm saying. And I think that's a tough conversation because I guess by default, I'm saying that people that are bigoted right now must have grown up at tables where their parents were saying, you know, maybe, maybe someone who's 60 years old now grew up at a table where their parents are saying, f those ends, why do they got to bust them into your school? We don't want, we don't want you going to school with them and having those sentiments. And so, because I don't want to sound like I'm bashing those people and all that, but at some point, it's just reality. I'm not being, trying to bash them. I'm just saying people have grown up with bigoted parents, and that translates onto them as they grow up, because we're.
[00:28:14] Speaker A: All, what's a factor? I don't know that you condemn someone for life, but it's definitely how you're raised beyond, you know, like, the specifics. I think it's the principles, a lot of times that they're instilled in you when you're raised. I mean, I'd say, though, for me, it doesn't. I agree. I don't, I don't think it's a vindictive thing, but I do think there's a lot of guilt that he feels, and, you know, that comes out in the book. He goes out of his way to talk about certain people. He did help, you know, Tom Ridges of the world and or even to mention, you know, Tom Ridge being someone he holds up high and saying, hey, you know, this is a guy that even, you know, like, when he was running for, you know, higher office in a primary, he still would stand on his principles. Like, he goes out of his way to talk about those people and, you know, that he was working on those campaigns and so forth. And I think that he knew all along that this was going on, and it was kind of a willful denial in terms of that. Like, I'll continue to do this. I'll live with this. He maybe seek out people, the kind of people that, you know, he likes or that he thinks are good people more than not. But the depth of the observation, I think he saw this all along and was okay with it until it got to a certain point, and that certain point was Donald Trump. And then it's like, you know what? I can't do this anymore. And so that's at the point that he was like, all right, I'm gonna. All this stuff that, you know, I was able to kind of set to the side previously. I'm gonna bring it all out now because this is just, this is a bridge too far, you know? So I don't think he just realized that all of a sudden. I think that he got to a breakpoint where it was like, okay, I get it. We're playing this political game. He talks about, hey, the Democrats aren't angels. They do certain things. They're not as bad as us, but they do certain things. Conservative media, you know, like, it's radicalizing. It's not something that there's an equivalent on the other side, but they do, they're not angels in mainstream media, either, so to speak. But, yeah, I think this is more of a breaking point. This is a guy that saw these things and was like, well, you know, it rationalized them until he basically felt like he couldn't rationalize them anymore.
[00:30:19] Speaker B: Yeah, man.
The other thing that I just want to kind of, as we're winding it down here, I just go over some of the stuff we discussed because a lot of things hit me, too, in that section where we were in the middle part of the book, where in the chapters when he talks about the machinery that this kind of, this need to create this separate America and this separate reality for the base and continue to cocoon them in a sense. Number one, you've mentioned this on different discussions we've had about politics and sometimes the media is that, again, those are signs of an abusive relationship. Right. When you don't want your kind of your people to be out there seeing anything other than what you're kind of just giving them. And the second thing is, this is why I think today in 2024, it's very interesting to watch the Democrats, a party, find their footing with this recent switch to Kamala Harris as the nominee from kind of a mojo and a marketing standpoint, because I think I'm just so used to seeing Democrats just not know how to play any kind of marketing game or being aggressive at all on a kind of an offense as relates to politics and the optics of it. And I think one thing that I smile and laugh at is the idea that this kind of thing of calling the Republican Party of today and people like Trump and JD Vance has been something that actually has gotten traction and sticks. And I think that's where when he talked about the kind of the ecosystems and this, this walling off of reality for the kind of republican base and the Trump base, really, I know there's a lot of Republicans that don't necessarily identify with MAGA like that. But let's say the MAGA base is kind of why they're a little bit weird. Because I was, I was looking at things recently just, you know, that there was a group of people that had diapers for Trump. There's, there's some, you know, the things like the conspiracy theories about Taylor Swift and the Super bowl and, and these constant conspiracy theories and then how much the party's changed. I was thinking about things like the way that they attack everything for being Dei now. Right. Every, that's such a thread and all this. And I thought just 20 years ago was 2004, literally. I mean, it's 2024. And George W. Bush was proud to have the most diverse cabinet at that time in history. Condi Rice as the national security advisor Colin Powell, secretary of State Alberto Gonzalez, attorney general at some point in the administration, appointed, and no Republicans called them DeI hires, not senators, not congressmen, all that today, 20 years later, they're all, anytime a non white person is in any position, it's a DEI hire. And so I'm just saying that that party has changed, period. And I think that's where Stuart Stevens really comes down with the whole idea that he felt it was all a lie because he came from the side of the party, that he would embrace the opening up of the tent and trying to win over more Americans with the message of republicanism. And not, like you pointed out to earlier in this discussion, suppression of voting and gerrymandering and all these kind of games to say, let's just, all that.
[00:33:37] Speaker A: Stuff all along, though, I mean, and that's kind of the thing.
[00:33:39] Speaker B: And you kind of, I think you're right to himself.
[00:33:42] Speaker A: Yeah, he compartmentalized it.
[00:33:43] Speaker B: Well, he didn't realize it would take over like it did.
[00:33:46] Speaker A: Well, and that's what it is. I mean, and I think the lie, truly getting at it. I don't think that the party has changed as much as that. I think what he's really saying is that these sentiments were things that the people in the party, the one, not all of them obviously felt it, but the ones that did didn't feel like they could be out and about with it, out front with it. And that what has happened, basically, is that Trump was the great revealer and all of the things that they thought they had to keep hitting. Newt Gingrich was having an affair at the time. He was going after Clinton for having an affair, but he knew, or he believed he had to keep that stuff secret. What Trump revealed is that, no, you don't. All of these, all of these contradictions, you know, that you're saying that, you know, like, oh, well, we need to, you know, appear to be, you know, God fearing or we need to appear to be family people that, you know, we don't, we haven't had three wives and, you know, we don't, you know, go and have sex with porn stars and all that. We don't have to pretend that stuff, like all of those things came out about Trump and it didn't dent his support. And so the pretending, he recognized that it was all this pretending going on, basically, and people thought that they had to pretend that this stuff mattered to them. And once they realized that they didn't have to pretend anymore because of Donald Trump, they just, all the facade was dropped. And naturally, also, it was all a lie all along. You know, these were just, these were just the window dressing that we were saying and doing that we thought people wanted to hear. But actually, the base that we cultivated isn't that interested in that stuff. Anyway, it was very interesting. I mean, we highly recommend the book. I think we can close up from here. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call. Like I see it. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it. Tell us what you think. Send it to a friend. Till next time. I'm James Keys.
[00:35:26] Speaker B: I'm Tundel Ganlana.
[00:35:28] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
