Thanks so much for joining us today. This afternoon session is entitled sarah kinzinger. They knew how a culture of conspiracy keeps america with Rick Perlstein. Sarahs book will available for sale and signing at the book sale and signing tonight on your map is labeled in and nancy, nancy sarah. The New York Times best selling author of hiding in plain sight and the view from flyover country and cohost of the acclaimed pod. Gaslit nation with andrea chalupa. She lives in saint louis. Moderator Rick Perlstein a best selling, award winning, historic alien of american politics whose journalism has appeared in. Publications including the New York Times, the new republic and the nation and is the board president of in these times magazine and in chicago. As the session is being recorded by cspan, we ask that during the q a session that you will please use the standing microphone, or there may be a volunteer with the mic. If you could please use one of the mics to ask your question. Following the session. Remember the book signing . We look forward to greeting you there as well. Please join me in giving a warm welcome to our panelists. Greetings and salutations, comrades. Here we are at the 17th chicago printers roebuck festival. I think that my opening joke today is going to be ive decided that im going to be telling tourists who want to visit chicago and see what it looks like in the rain should definitely come during the book festival because think were on ten rains arms at a 17 so far. But all that means is you have to come in from the cold and, listen to all of us. Yak. So its a pleasure to be. Im really thrilled to be here with sarah kendzior, who id heard of, but i had never the chance to read before and i was spurred to do a deep dive in her work and the most fascinating and delightful thing to discover was what a wonderful prose stylist she is. Epigrammatic poetic, a real clinic in how to get across sometimes difficult fugitive, abstract, often memoirs that techniques so definitely pick her up if for that reason. Also, its also a delight because in a lot ways were peas in a pod. We both are writers about the process of democracy in america who. Try to stare into the abyss and demand our readers do so as well and enjoin them pull them by the lapels and to get them to understand that its not going to go away because of sentimental nostrums, unity or american exceptionalism or the glories of our institutions. But that really the only way out is through. We have to do the hard work of justice. Often proceeds at the expense of, dare i say it, the dirty word, unity. So i think its going to make a fascinating discussion. We also have some approaches to. So, sarah starts with an authors note says they new discusses differences between a conspiracy and a Conspiracy Theory between a conspiracy and a conspiracy. Two terms that those in power want us to believe are so inseparable, so that we so that we remain ignorant of the past and passive about the future. I didnt get that quite right. I didnt type it right. But you have to read it yourself. And then she starts with an epigram, quote unquote. Nobody saw it coming, which and kind of, i think a sly joke you describe as an american folk saying nobody saw it coming. Something i definitely heard my own work. People talking about my own work. So were not even on the first page and we always already a pretty good table setting the kind of themes were going to be exploring in this very interesting book. So why dont we start there . Difference between conspirator seeing a Conspiracy Theory and how that actively abets a kind of will the public stupidity about whats happening in front of our eyes. Thank you. Thank you for this introduction and thanks, everybody, for coming. You know, its a kind of hearken back to your work. What weve been seeing, you know, for the last 50 years or so, our actual conspiracies, actual state crimes, you know, from watergate to irancontra. To 911 today to the aftermath, 911 and the illegal war in iraq, the financial collapse. The question of election of trump, so on and so forth. We see not just the same types of plots over and over but often the same individuals participating in them, you know, over and over as well throughout multiple administrations and. A lot of people dont want to reconcile with that. They dont want to reconcile with elite power grabbing wealth grabbing, opportunity hoarding. And they dont to grapple with the idea of elite criminal impunity. It makes obviously the wealthy and powerful and comfortable and it makes ordinary citizens feel uncomfortable, too, because it makes you feel powerless. It makes you feel helpless. And so the Natural Inclination then is to dismiss examination of the dark roots of these problems as alarmist, as hysterical, or as, quote Conspiracy Theory and Conspiracy Theory is a tough one because the these types of operation, you know, a crime like irancontra or something or what trump has done are these very elaborate sort of plots that are involving transnational actors and dirty money and all this kind of stuff. They are shadowy by nature theyre not transparent. Theyre not efficiently invested gated. And but they are clearly a conspiracy, you know, which i define as a secret or some secret plot of powerful actors to carry out a plan against the public. Well, so youre not able to fully find out all the information about them, you know . No matter how hard you try, but, you know, its a conspiracy, is there . You have some evidence . You dont have all the evidence. So what do you do . You form theory. And so you have now a Conspiracy Theory, but thats become a dirty word. Thats become a stigmatized concept. And its left us with less of an ability to. Talk about these topics in forthright way for fear of being labeled as same type of person, as, say, alex jones, someone else who formulates conspiracy theories, but theyre not based on evidence. Theyre not based on facts. Theyre not based on observed reality either, you know, based on imaginings, weaponized political propaganda purposes. And so with the new, i do a lot of different things. But, you know, one of the things i want to do is kind of a race that stigma and let people free to explore these of topics. You know, people should be investigating, you know, that affect you know, our our justice in america or, you know, basic civic institutions in america. All of this is coinciding, you know, as im sure rick has noticed as well, with a defunding of journalism, you know, very much so over the last four decades, but especially since 2008, and also know the rise of access journalism and really superficial cable news punditry. They dont want to go there. They dont want to examine these things often because the people in their own Social Circle are implicated in these plots and they dont want to lose their own positions in place in that hierarchy. Yeah, something as simple, which i actually wrote about in your first book, and we dont really about it as a democracy issue, but something as simple. Paywalls, yes, for journalism, especially for scholars. Right. Its its prohibited, really expensive to find stuff out and like a lot of profit motive problems going on here. So yeah, i think the one of the most humanizing examples to bring this home in the book is your explanation about why your neighbors in missouri might be suspicious about getting the covid vaccine. So why dont you take that one . Yeah, i you know, i live in saint louis. Ive lived there for about 17 years. You know, and i live in missouri. And im very against this false binary of, you know, red states and states. As ive said for a long time, america is purple. Its purple like a bruise. And youre going to meet people across sides of the political spectrum in missouri. And its certainly not binary. What does kind of hold us together as a state is this profound sense of abandonment and of dissolution men. And its, you know, its merited. Its because we have been abandoned. Its because we have been let down. Weve been let down by our political officials. But, you know, notably missouri, one of the greatest villains in the last 15 to 20 years has been the pharmaceutical industry, has been people like the sackler family. You know, these criminal corporate empires that peddle opioids, you know, leading to one of the greatest drug catastrophes in recent american history, leading mass death and remaining unpunished, you know, being on transcripts, laughing at the people that they killed in order to make money so that creates incredible suspicion of big pharma. And that suspicion is merited. And a lot of folks just not want to be fooled again. They did not want to get their hopes up for a vaccine, were suspicious of the vaccine. Theyre susceptible propaganda about the vaccine but you know to put it in a way you know, Life Expectancy is going down. Its going down nationwide. But it was going down in missouri already. Thats why were the bellwether state. You in these dark times and think a lot of folks sort of think well, you know, if im going to be taken out like im going to do it myself. Im not going to be fooled. Im not going to be i need a way to control the situation and and as time went on, i you know, theres also a lot of people who are just hesitant to take it. They genuinely were waiting to see how does this play out . Are there side effects . Does thing work . Does it actually kill you and . Then they were willing to take it. Once there is evidence that was portrayed, i felt in the National Media in a very different way because what i saw were a lot of people who were very afraid and there is merit behind that fear. There is, you know, priors and experience of being betrayed behind that fear. And it wasnt like a political thing. They werent like, im doing this despite joe biden. Its like people dont have the luxury of thinking in those terms of thinking in that sort of political punditry way. Theyre just trying to survive. Theyre just trying to get by and of course, everybody is traumatized. No matter where you stand by living through a pandemic. And then what happens when there if this medicine happens to fail them. Well, yeah. And thats another thing that you know i go into and this this book has something to off everybody but you know the cdc has failed us it has failed us in an extraordinary and it fails us more and more, you know, as every day goes on when this crisis began, we at least had access to Accurate Information about. You know how bad the virus is in certain areas. And if we werent getting great information from our local, we could at least get it in the beginning somewhat from the cdc and then make informed decisions based what we thought was best. We shouldnt have had to do this as citizens, just like this is why theres a cdc you know, its not there so that, you know, can go on television and blather. Its not there. Some people can burn little dr. Fauci prayer candles like this is all emblematic of deep dysfunction. You know, the standing and this hero worship of Public Public officials who fail us, you know, and who have failed us historically, like fauci initially failed america with the aids virus. It was only after, you know, larry kramer and other aids activists, you know, forced him basically, you know, bullied him into doing his job, that he rose to the occasion and so, again, you know, we see these recurring failed actors, whether its fauci or mueller, and we see this recurring people like, you know, bill barr, roger stone, my entire life has been these individuals. They were my age when i was born and theyre still around you in their seventies and eighties running this country today. Ive known no other american icon. And ill just say, you know, its been a downhill. Yeah i mean, fauci is a really interesting case study about, you know, the soft bigotry of low expectations when it comes to taking be coming venerated public figure in america. I its not in your book you dont hear it at all but if you read the classics of how the aids crisis happened and the band played on by name escapes me i guess schultz, fauci at the beginning of the aids crisis, missed characterize a study, an editorial in the journal of the American Medical Association and said that aids could be passed by casual contact, which was perceived which which which caused actually some of the nastiest backlashes in public against, you know, gays and the career enduring mistake. But theres a lot of forgiveness up there in the upper atmosphere so youve weve mentioned one relevant aspect of your identity and Something Else so i share were writers write in the middle of the country we visit new york and we constantly remind them that america has more than one time zone shocking the number of people in new york who say, can we call it three . And our to learn that, you have to ask them, do you mean three . Eastern standard time . Right. This is kind of like the its kind of a banal example of the unpaid internship phenomenon. Right. The extraordinary parochialism of the people who, you know, are basically at the command module, American Culture and politics, another one is that youre a scholar of Eastern Europe. Well, essential, essentially. Central asia. Right. So one of the one of the fascinating things ive observed is that some of the best analysts about america who cut through the confusing confusing, confused sentimentality about american exceptionalism are either people who study basically the world east, western europe, people like tim snyder, or people who are from that part of the world i can think of ive been doing research on the tea party for my next book and remember we all heard that it was all spontaneous because this guy named Rick Santelli gave a rant on tv. Everyones like, oh, i agree, lets have protests. It took this guy writing for his own publication and publishing it and all places that of playboy and playboy dot com. This guy named yasha levine to discover that in fact santelli is speech coordinated by a bunch of koch brothers, front groups. And the reason he thought to think about this and look into it even as the rest of the journalists for another two years called it spontaneous and pretended his journalism didnt even exist. Was that what was happening basically this guy said something on tv and suddenly next theres this whole infrastructure of protest over the country was that it reminded him of what hed seen under putin. So about your experience as a scholar of uzbekistan, we just we didnt we dont even you know, were americans know god invented war to teach us geography. Right. Ill just say, you know when i started to get my ph. D. In 2006 studying uzbek a stance politics. I absolutely knew that i was going to use that knowledge to apply it to the host of Celebrity Apprentice and his desire to turn america and its nice marketing move erratic mafia state it was all preplanned all you know part of the game but you know thats its like essential former soviet central asia basic lee the way that their autocrats and kleptocratic leaders rule is very much the way that i thought trump rule its a spectacular state with a lot of pageantry that hides organized crime, operating as governments dictators that have extreme person ality cults, you know, including, you know, the former leader of turkmenistan, you know, renamed himself turkmen by xi. And a golden statue that rotated to face the sun, which is, you know, 100 something i pictured trump doing. And so when he was running, had this weird kind of experience of like, okay, im, you know, well versed in what has happened to the authoritarian and states of the former soviet union in central asia. And i also live in saint louis, live in a bottomed out part of america. You know, theres rick just noted that its been a band and that is considered, quote, flyover. Thats not considered important. And where if trump comes in with the right kind of propaganda with the, you know, sense of vulture like empathy in which he can pick up very accurately what is ailing people, but then just simply exploit it for his own gain. He had a chance to win. So i was very i was convinced he would win. And i was very concerned that when he did win, he would attempt to rule like a Central Asian autocrat. And thats unfortunately exactly what happened. And i do think that scholars of Eastern Europe and the former soviet union and scholars autocracy in general, certainly saw this coming. They did not have the attitude of it cant happen here, which is very much an american exceptionalism attitude because anyone who study dictatorships knows it can happen anywhere. There isnt any place that is immune from this. And what trump was very savvy to is understanding American Political Culture and american pop culture and the vulnerabilities of the economy and racism and White Supremacy and xenophobia and all these tendencies that have been here since time immemorial, honing in them and exploiting them for gain. So its really, you know, collaboration. Ill just say one final thing, which is, you know, i kind of went into this. Wow. He really reminds me of these, you know, horrible, degenerate actors from the former soviet union. Then found he was, you know, literallyhrou Paul Manafort that i wasnt actually making a metaphor. I was just accurately explaining the situation in reality because hes surrounded by actual registered foreign agents including for the kremlin. And he has his own ties to the kremlin dating back 40 years. So that was my question then, was, well, why the hell arent people talking about this like, why is it just me and like two other people all dismissed as conspiracy and. Well, here we are with nukes buried somewhere mar a lago. So yeah. What i was in the media at the time out there 2016 was that he wasnt even trying to win this was just all, you know, was a scam to, you know, get increases Television Ratings you know Huffington Post put him on the entertainment page. Yeah, they love that. They love this idea that donald trump is content to lose to a woman and to a clinton. I mean, i would just hear people saying this and im like, you dont understand whats happening here. He would only run if he knew he would win if he thought his own mind, if he was incredibly convinced that he win. You know, denial is not just a river that starts, you know, in the bayou of louisiana and all the way up to minnesota. I just made that one up. So. No, no, catch it. Youre sorry . Theres a river. Its called the mississippi. Its really weird. Our differences. You have an extraordinary level of confidence and your. I just have the evidence to my senses i dont thats why i write thousand page books. You know i always tried to like, you know, just prove it. 50 different ways. But you have a real confidence to kind of put an intuition out there. One of them, you know about things that, as you say, are, in fact shadowy by nature that, are instigated by actors who are basically professional liars and deceivers and cover their tracks. And you are to kind of leap a leap over to kind of make conclusions one that you make in the book that i found really striking unless i misreading you you suggest that both pizza gate and and were basically shrimp creation is trump adjacent to creations why dont you go into that one. Yeah i dont know the origins exactly. I dont know who precise fully came up with either of these narrowed lives. But what i talk about in the book is basically preemptive narrative inversion. For example, trump spent his life surrounded by known pedophiles. Thats not a, you know, baseless claim, like i can name them. Its, you know, john jeffrey epstein, john casablancas, you know, and so on and so forth. Theyre listed in the book. I dont need to get all this in there anyway. So one would think, you know, maybe the media would be interested in this because like, you know, whos with five pedophiles, you know, but they didnt want to. They didnt want to go there back in 2015. And then, you know in 2016, suddenly this narrative emerges that there is a pedophile child trafficking ring very similar to the epstein operation in the Democratic Party, you know, using a pizza parlor as their base. And it sounds, you know, ludicrous. But its also like 100 times worse than what trump actually awful as yeah well they had you know satanic and all that stuff babies blood and what i first thought when i saw it its like thats the epstein and now if people bring up the actual jeffrey epstein, Glenn Maxwell operation that goes back decades and was not well covered even after epsteins arrest was going to, you know, high society parties and the severity of it, the seriousness of it was dismissed. People are going to say, you sound like pizzagate. And i think that those types of rumors the same thing is true of q and on and all of the claims theyve made. They were also completely correct about epstein, like when the media wasnt covering epstein, who was q and on but unfortunately. Q Anonymous Sources saying jfk jr was going to rise from the dead to be trumps president. So, you know, the tendency there was to then be like, well, you have to dismiss these claims because theyre coming from this group of people who clearly delusional or theyre coming from people who think that, you know, comic ping pong is a trafficking operation. Like we obviously cant trust anything theyre saying. But thats the genius of that kind of propaganda does that. There are grains of very serious, very disturbing truths buried in this morass of. And its just, you know, that is a weapon that they wield. So i do think that i dont know, its trump adjacent actors or epstein adjacent actors or what i do know that people wanted that story buried and theyre very successful at burying that story to the point that, you know, when one of the victims is going to have a press conference a week before election day in 2016, she was threatened with Death Threats. Her lawyer was threatened with Death Threats. And it was only after epstein suicide that any of this really became covered in great detail. But in a way that was strange to me, it was as if all magazines that had previously killed stories out of fear suddenly felt like they could release them because, you know, epstein had been reported, have killed himself in prison, was like a windfall, you know, and i discussed that as well. Suddenly, so much information, you know, went from a paucity of information to, a surplus. And, you know, he was maimed into inscrutability and unfortunately, you know, that just contribute to the lack of justice, which is the most important thing about this case is the victims. Its the girls who suffered, the people who suffered. You know, that should be what is emphasized. But instead have means in the sense that well never get to the bottom of this. Whereas i do, our officials are still obligated to get to the bottom of this, you know, no matter who it implicates and it implicates people across the political spectrum. I mean, i have no trouble believing. Jeffrey epstein committed suicide. And i also have no trouble believing that he worked very hard to make it look like he was killed because hes radical narcissist, just like john mcafee. I dont know if youve seen the amazing documentary about him, too, because if someone kills you, youre really important. If you commit suicide, its a failure. Theres a bunch of places in the book you say this death was mysterious. Death was mysterious. Robert maxwells death, a suspicious, i guess what i would ask you and this is the toughest i can ask is like when william f buckley, you know, went after the John Birch Society. Right. He said the problem with the John Birch Society is, you know, they have great politics. You know, they believe that, you know, like kennedy is evil just like i do, you know, but that theyre deducing subjective motives from objective outcomes. So how do you handle that kind of criticism, which i think youre going to have to handle in the next couple of weeks and months . Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, part of it is, you know, its funny because youre saying im very confident, but also that im saying over and over i dont really know whats going on, you know. So i guess what i tried to do is, you know, maintain integrity. And if i dont know something, ill just say that i dont know it. Ill say this is what i do know and this is what i suspect and one of the reasons i dont know anything is because an active effort to cover up information. And heres my evidence. Theres an active effort to cover up information. And, you know, i am trying to kind of break through this barrier here where people will be willing to invest to get a lot of the cases that i lay out, because its not just about trump. You know, i write about a number of things, basically going back to the eighties, sometimes earlier, because theyre all there are these recurring individuals. And i think that this needs to investigated. I dont think were going to be able to move out of our current political crisis unless these cases of, you know, transnational organized crime and espionage and so many other buried state secrets are gutted out. I think that thats the root of the impasse so im trying to do this. I mean, ideally to improve this country, to move us in a better like im writing this with you know some hope how it ends up i dont know but you know, one thing i do i had to do and i just state this explicitly as sort destroying my own reputation in the process so if people are going to call me hysterical or alarmist or crazy or what have you, so be it. You know, i was very about everything i said. I didnt pretend i knew stuff i didnt. And thats all i can really. Thats all i can really do. I like to say i try to tell the truth as i see it without fear or favor and devil. Take the hindmost. Exactly. Well, honey badger action as our friend steve banner says. So back to stuff i love and agree with, my favorite part is and i go into this at length in the book im working on is your analysis of an ideology of democratic elites that i personally call obama basically that republicans violate so many norms, right . So the way to fight them, the way to do the opposite, the way to counter that is to be as normal as possible. Right. That they break the world. So rules are going to were going to provide the alternative of fastidiously following the rules. And the problem with that is, i mean, i really do think in a lot of ways the ground state of american is is pretty febrile reaction. And the only time weve actually, you know, made progress breaking out of that has in fact, been the forces of good on the liberal side of the ledger, in my judgment and probably yours breaking rules breaking norms. I mean i could give you a ton of examples. Lincoln was one of them, by the way but one is you know, like the judge in the case, john sirica, you know, he was completely broke every about how youre supposed to run a trial because he just knew that these five guys in front of him who were claiming that they were the people who were completely for watergate, were not completely responsible for watergate. So he would badger them. And he was like he was a laughingstock. Washington people thought he was working for mcgovern campaign, right . But it was by breaking those norms that he was able to kind of break through. And then you know, by the next year, his courtroom was the biggest, you know, tourist attraction in washington. And i like to say, if it wasnt for judge sirica, you know, Richard Nixon, might still be president. But that sort of attitude, that, you know, under conditions of extreme duress, you have to be willing basically to take risks for justice is something thats completely absent from our democratic elites for the ones, i think, on the january Six Committee and, you know, the example of nancy pelosi in the first impeachment is something that ive been obsessed with. Ill send you this. I have a timeline of everything she said every day and everything she said. I was trying to distance herself from agency that im not going to do anything lincolns said that with the public you can do anything without them. You cant. You do everything without them. You cant do anything which by which he meant you have to persuade public. But she took it as i have to follow the public show he to just say we can investigate trump without drafting articles as the facts take us. The truth can be gained outside of impeachment hearing. This is kind of day by day by day. We have to. Impeachment is the most divisive force we have to take. The path of fact fighting, but were not there yet. Trump is this is the best one. Trump is goading us to impeach him. So he wants us to impeach him. So were going to show him were not going to impeach him. It just went on and on and on until she said the evidence has to be so overwhelming. And this was kind of evidence that would somehow come of itself because she was not investigating. Right. That it would persuade the republicans. Right and then finally she, you know, kind of the broke and she was forced to do it. But they did it without, you know, calling any hostile witnesses. And this is basically, you know, its an ideology. They call it institute journalism. Right. And i think for that, i want to actually have you read you kind of refer the because her prose so good you refer to the youve referred to this before. So you kind of you kind of gave a spoiler. But id like you to read this paragraph that starts the bottom of 112. And its basically it has to do something with something called the you call a normalcy bias. And we can get into that. So the part where you is no. And then that paragraph. Oh all right, lets see how i do here. That reading glasses. Okay. Oh, you want me to read it . No, no, i think. I can do it. As i say, i definitely want this this list of years of pelosi things. Yeah, its books. I didnt end up writing about it, but it was just of at this time she was being venerated and. Youll see why. Yeah, ill. Ill read this first. Im briefly covered on that and. Okay, im reading now. Is there no else to oversee this . I about fauci the same way i wondered robert mueller, the fbi head who declined to investigate criminal operatives within trumps, became the special counsel investigating trump. Mueller was valorized by the media as the consummate, lawful gman, but he went on to let trump slide to the institutionalist fallacy that because someone spends a long in a powerful bureaucratic position, they become an exemplar of competence, of an enabler, of corruption. Well appealed to me by exactly appealed to americans because it offered relief from the frenetic trump who had deceptively typecast himself as a political outsider instead of and critics swamp spawn in 2019 and 2020 frightened america brought back prayer candles adorned with pictures of mueller and fauci, candles that burned down facts with the smoke, a delusion this is savior syndrome. The accomplice of normalcy bias. The belief that the somebody who is supposed to stop the crisis has arrived when all often they are complicit in the crisis or apathetic towards its victims. Right. You want to comment on that. Yeah. Just want to say, you know when you were listing the things pelosi said the thing that always stuck in my mind was in march 2019 where she just said about impeachment hes just not worth it, right . And what i took from that was americas worth it, the rule of law. Its not worth it. Fighting corruption is not worth it, cutting out bad actors is not worth it. It was a disrespect of the american people. And the same thing is true with these bloated, bloviating, often enablers of corruption and crime that you are valorized because of their position because of their place in a nostalgia hierarchy. And this is also one of the reasons that we have a chair in, you know, and i dont mean to be just here. The problem, not that folks are old, its that bad folks are old and are still in power and theyve been in power since i was literally born. Like theyve been on a, you know, 40 year crime spree and. That is a problem for our country. I mean, and then you get into Democratic Party and the question is why they like this. Its like every, you know, kind of dinner party have why are the democrats like this . Why are they like this . And theres, you know, a lot of different interpretations. One of them is that they share the corruption, which i think is a lot of what you kind of lean on and certainly as someone whos written a lot about a certain for former mayor of the city of chicago. You know i am completely did you know when rahm emanuel would come when his new congressman would Enter Congress that hed recruit . Hed always put them on the Banking Committee because that was kind of the best way for them to kind of raise the money they needed to, be reelected, even though they often werent reelected because they werent they didnt come from grassroots. They just kind of been imposed above on the district. But at the same time, thats not my main interpretation. Im fascinated by i think a lot of us wonder why people, like pelosi or the in charge of the Democratic Party do not let the full force of justice visit. You know kind of the malefactors in the Republican Party. And i dont think its that they dont understand wicked and evil. They are how it goes. I think its because they do and that theres an enormous amount of fear ive gotten Death Threats. Youve gotten Death Threats. Every democratic member of gets Death Threats constantly. And theyre credible Death Threats are doxing Death Threats. You know, theyre theyre theyre envelopes full of powder Death Threats. We dont hear about most of them. And the people who are in opposition to the ideology of liberal cosmopolitan cosmopolitanism and science and Good Government have lots and, lots of guns and. They say quite explicitly that the reason they have lots and lots of guns is to fight tyrants like brandon like obama, like pelosi. So, i mean, i, you know, i, i think its a its a lack of backbone and sourness. I think that is its deeply structured into the institutions of this country ever going back to the founding a country that we formed only by papering over this contradiction, freedom and slavery. Right. I think. One difference we have, i think, is that, you tend to find the male faction kind of as a top down kind thing, right. That democrats and republican ones. And i think you you illustrate clearly and a lot of places do kind of share certain corrupt interests. But at the same time i find the kind of fearful energies that that subvert democracy often come from the bottom up and to give one example, you know, George W Bush will love to pass an Immigration Reform that made it easier for people to get citizenship in america. But, you know, the uproar from people calling it a talk radio and the kind of people have guns was so intense that he abandoned it. And you describe yourself as a political independent, right . I have a different perspective. I you know, i say as flawed as the Democratic Party, i kind of reverse frederick. Right. You know, you know, the quote at the end of the 19th century, when, you know, the Democratic Party was the party White Supremacy and terrorism, um, and the Republican Party was the profoundly flawed and vessel that at least had this kind of nominal to interracial democracy. He said the republicans are the boat also this is the sea and you know i call myself a partizan democrat because i think that the only alternative and think that if democrats at this juncture operational control we we would be looking a pretty different situation. You see differently. Yeah. I mean, you know, im an independent. Ive never in a Political Party, i sound like im at the castle hearings. But, you know, i did vote for the democrats. I mean, i live in missouri, like, what am i going to do for for josh hawley, for god. So, you know, i vote the line. I do vote for the democrats. That sense im fairly consistent. Its more just theres no need. You know, i still vote in primaries without registering. Whats been frustrating, especially the current administration, is that, you know, they technically do have power they have the house, they have the senate, they have military. And what weve been witnessing is that these other top forces, for example, the hijacking of the Supreme Court by right wing extremists and then the Supreme Court rulings like Citizens United or the repeal of the vra, that, you know, built up exactly the people youve been discussing. You know, militant groups, racists know there is a bottom up energy there. I think the top down is more threatening. Think the power of the Supreme Court to override the decisions of, the senate to override the decisions of, you know, individual states that is a very threatening thing. You know, we have a radical minority that has hijacked this country and. We dont have a Political Party that standing up to them. And i worry that time is running out. I worry that the democrats not done very much to try to preserve voting rights, which is not just a matter of preserving the of the, you know, the ability to vote of all americans, which is, you know, a crucial right that has already been battered and brought down in the last ten years. But what puzzles is, i think its in their selfinterest, like how are they going to stay in office if cant vote for them . Why is this not a priority out of pure selfishness . And thats mysterious to me that really makes you wonder whats good. I mean theres guns but theres going to be guns anyway and like you got i mean this is thats why the current in well comes from you know i mean we dont have you know i mean its interesting whats a terrible colonialist but hes like im you know the only way out is through you know, its like chamberlain just said, lets like lets lets let hitler, you know, have a little peace. Right wingers love to talk about chamberlain and backbone. But he said, look, this guys not going away. You know, hes hes hes pushing and, you know, you know npr New York Times all, these places, cnn. Right. All these places that are trying to accommodate the republicans. Guess what . When we have fascism in this country, youre going to be the first ones up against the wall. It doesnt matter. Nice. You are, in fact, because youre so nice to them, youll be seen as weak and vulnerable. So, i mean, were not really, you know, in a different place. Were just kind of interpreting things. I think in a different way. And this really sets up a really take us into the homestretch stretch i think a really interesting question suddenly the Accountability Movement is coming, right . So we have this mar a lago. What looks like might be an indictment of donald trump. Everything seems to point in that direction. Why do you think the elite if we can use that abstraction which another thing i love the elite drew the line where they did what do you think itll amount to whats happening here why the why why suddenly right. Why suddenly we see the forces of justice and the Democratic Party and justice department, including this guy, merrick garland, who are terrified, was going to let things go without any sort of resistance at all. Why do we see the full force of state being brought to bear against trump . Because of the mar a lago stuff. The force of this such thing is there in part because its a national security. Its not about partizanship, its really about the safety of our country and. What they let stay in mar a lago are high level classified documents related to nuclear material, and thats a profoundly dangerous thing to do. And the doj was content to you know, in addition not prosecuting prosecuting him for his myriad of other crimes. You know they let the statute of limitations run out on the mueller, so on and so forth. This is very and this is, again, a thing where i is it not in our own selfinterest to not be, you know, obliterated in a nuclear war . I would think it would be in everyones selfinterest. So its puzzling to me. They havent acted when i into merrick garland. I mean, i find all sorts of terrible things, you know, many of which are related to his mentor jamie gorelick, who brought him into the clinton doj and is basically the forrest gump of corruption involved in, you know, every major scandal of the 25 years, the financial crisis . 911 she was jared and ivankas lawyer, though. This is just the thing that i want on record shes who got jared and ivanka into the white house despite the fact that they had lied more than any people in Human History and im not exaggerating here on their security clearance forms my guess is that if there are secrets being traded or sold, kushner is someone that am suspicious is doing that given that he was given 2 billion by saudi arabia for no apparent reason. So thats something the doj should really be on top of, its national crisis. It doesnt matter. You voted for. It doesnt matter if you like trump, you hate him, whatever. It makes no difference. America is being threatened. The United States of america is under from within and it is under threat from abroad and is under threat because those elements are linked and they are linked through white collar and, organized crime and autocracies across the world. And its strange to me that thats not a priority of of this doj. Well, i think it kind of is now. But anyway, so lets lets lets cross our fingers. Lets we open up to the audience. I mean, it really is stunning to see even for people who follow this stuff, you know, kind of all the trump and trump adjacent kind of arrayed in a compact way. I mean, youre just kind of like your your jaw kind of drops. So my question is, of all the that donald trump and his associates appear to have committed but have not been brought to justice for, i guess beside the ones that were involved involving nuclear secrets, i believe covered which the ones concerned you the most how am i . I mean at this point its more just the the precedent of impunity that has been established fact that now that trump has not been punished all of these different crimes you obstruction of justice abuse of the pardon you know selling and treating or stealing classified information, consorting with a variety, pedophiles, etc. , etc. I mean, it has set a precedent for anyone who comes in after and im not as worried about trump the individual as i am. Trump the criminal cohort and successors to trump slicker people who will capitalize on the of those institutions of the loss of protocols and norms and will cite him as precedent. So i cant a crime im worried about the bigger picture. Well, but sarah, dont you understand that if trump goes on trial, that would be very divisive, the country might become ungovernable know that. I mean, of course, thats what gerald said when you part of Richard Nixon there might be a coup the carpet might get attacked. Oh, my god. What would happen . I mean, thats the thing. I guess i kind of like that that was my kind of like, you know, you know, they called, you know, obama, you know, the worst communists, even though he passed a stimulus that had a tax cut for 95 of americans, you know, if hed had tax cut for 98 of americans, you know, or been 600 billion instead of 750 billion, i mean, thats the ive always had virtue is theres no that these kind of fear of forces that are arrayed against us can feel more of an existential threat because its not, you know, kind of cause and effect, rational policy calculations at some its its kind of existential has to do with you peoples sense of psychic security, which was the best way to address peoples psychic security, would be to have a social democracy and a safety net and an idea that if, you know, you know, get sick from a virus, that you dont have to worry about going to the doctor because its free. All that good stuff, which is you know why, hold out hope for poor friends in the Democratic Party eventually getting it right great well this been a very productive discussion between me and sarah but sarah is a great small d democrat and she wants to hear your voices. And were on. So, you know, comb your hair, keep your mask on, keep your medicine and use the microphone. I got plenty of questions. I mean, what if. Yeah, this young. Hi. Hello. What do you think the most effective for lack of a better term weapon, is that we can implement as a public to help as you do like help amplify and shine a light and and be proactive in fight against transnational. Yeah thats, a tough question because unfortunately we cant a citizens arrest you know i think we all would have banded together and that by now you know thats one of my big frustrations with the doj. But you know what people can do is document they see you know ive been encouraging from the beginning when trump was running for be able to just keep a low key kind of diary write down your observation of life and not just what happens what is your expectation you know, what are your exact actions of life in america . What are your expectation of justice . And then go back and look at what youre writing and see how that changes over time because there one of their greatest weapons is normalizing. All of this is streamlining criminality, you know, from powerful actors and making us just sort of think, well, gaslighting. Yeah, yeah. Thats how you fight gaslighting. Thats fascinating because two different directions. And once i think of very similar, a famous quote from orwell that the hardest thing to do is notice whats happening in front your nose, which is the theme of the book. And basically that that basically that its degraded the passage of time. But the other thing thats really shocking about hearing you say that is thats basically the samizdat culture of the soviet union, where people are like, we are going to record whats happening at the at the risk of our lives going to siberia, because were not going to let them have the truth. Were not going to let them have two plus two equals five. You know, we are going to keep on insisting two plus two equals four, even if the media, the truth might be somewhere in between and two plus two equals 4. 5. Right. And we have tools at our fingertips. I mean, there are a of things i hate about the and im very wary about algorithms and worry about the sort of architecture of social media websites. But, you know, samizdat was very difficult to produce what. Is it why dont we tell people what samizdat, underground literature critiquing the dominant political system, you know, in the in the former soviet union and in Eastern European and warsaw pact satellite states, you know, so it was a means of public expression. It was a means fighting back and disseminating information, even though it was illegal it was very risky. It would be, you know, cassettes that were copied, you know, sort of zine type magazines that were xeroxed. It took a lot of effort for this stuff. Get around. I mean, i ended up writing my dissertation on uzbek in exile, you know, people who had uzbekistan right wing. Blogging had emerged and they couldnt believe it. It was just amazing amount of effort that it would have taken them and some them were people who had fought the soviets back in the eighties to fight back. Suddenly they had this world their fingertips, and they could express anything mean. Of course what happened is they all fighting with each you. Talk about in the previous book about this was really fascinating how the opening of the internet. You know im enough to remember this had this enormous you know kind of there was this enormous optimism but the authority realized that if they let a little freedom happen, its kind of like they kind of like give people can give them enough rope basically to hang them for it. The ones that worked for that the open authoritarianism networked Authority Networks of yeah its a theory from rebecca and there are certain authoritarian states like azerbaijan was one and russia was one until somewhat more recently when they began massively losing a war. You know, they would leave the internet open enough to that propaganda and wild narratives and all these things take over so that people felt like theres no point in even trying to find out what is true. Its too difficult. Its risky its full of horrific, scandalous. Im checking out mentally. Im not civically engaged anymore. That is very much model of what the republicans and other bad actors in america have been doing in the last seven years. Its bombarding you with crime and scandal and covering up crime. A scandal. Yeah. Is this the last western from over here . Okay, great. I first want to say thank you very much for your work. Definitely appreciate it. Kind of piggybacking the last question, do you think its its possible that we as, a public can use things like a general strike or sustained mass political protest as a tool to get us out of this political crisis . I think you should try whatever you i mean, we havent had that. So lets see what happens. One thing i worry sort of with a general strike, you know, we have corporations that have so much wealth and power that they are perfectly fine just, you know, firing people, letting them go. But we also have a Labor Movement that is more vivid than anything ive seen in my lifetime and thats really, you know, emerged taken power in the last ten years. And see it with amazon, you see it with starbucks. I think that that should be highly encouraged. And i think, you know, you may have more to say, actually. I mean, one of the things thats really fascinating is i invite you also to tune in thursday evening at 7 00 for the in these times scale, which adam mckay will be interviewed about some of the stuff. But one of the fascinating things that happens when people join labor unions is this is the province of social science, they become less racist, they become less xenophobic. Right . Once people feel commonality of interests on the job, the common enemy, thats the way you degrade the strategic capacity of the bad guys and their ability to use, you know, the weimar germany socialists to say antisemitism is the socialism of fools. In other words, you can kind of fight a just economy or, you can have scapegoating. Thats pretty much choice between socialism and barbarism right there. So, you know, strengthen labor union is something thats kind of within our grasp. And one of the fascinating things about the labor uprisings were seeing, for example, amazon news were going to be honoring on thursday night, the amazon union is that the bureaucrats run the Labor Movement are so sclerotic and selfsatisfied, they basically created their own union, you know, because you know, the folks, you know, in washington, first of all, they they all their money, you know, for their Pension Funds by, you know, investing in private equity, right so, you know, labor you know, independent labor unions. I mean, like, you know, poland had labor unions. Right. But was the independent labor unions that really scared them. Right. How much . We have 5 minutes. A minute. Do you want to . I want you give a final word. A priori for us to take home. Im sure what to say. I want to thank everybody for coming. You know, i do think its important to vote in the upcoming. I just want to specify that since i am know, politically unaffiliated, why not . But you you should vote. Join unions. There are you can do. I hope you dont have the take away from my talk that everything is hopeless and nothing can possibly change for the better. I think it can. It just takes, you know, tremendous will. It does. The arc does not bend naturally. Know you have to be the one to push it. So let that be the takeaway. Great. Lets applaud ourselves and our host. Right as well, with his departure from the scene, this argument begins anew. And ive always thought it was very interesting. The 1988 gop primary was in many ways a missed opportunity, because you had a moment there where the Republican Party could have been forced to choose between jack kemp, your old boss, and buchanan. Pat doesnt run for president in 1988. He waits until 1992 because he recognizes smartly that reagans successor is probably going to be george h. W. Bush, who is not a reaganite. No, no. Who is establishing that republican. And so then we get the fight between the establishment republicanism represented by bush and buchanan in 1992, representing the populist wing, representing the resurgent of the old right in its attitudes toward war and its attitudes toward immigration. And then really beginning in the in buchanans 96 campaign, picking up the trade issue as well, becoming more protectionist. So that debate is had, but buchanan never is successful. And in 2000, of course, he leaves the Republican Party and he runs for president on the reform ticket, where one of his rivals is a businessman named donald trump. And i think buchanan is the first to recognize the irony that 16 years later, trump would ascend to the presidency on many of the ideas that he was lambasting buchanan about just in the 2000 cycle. But so at the time, at the moment, i do think the argument has been settled in the favor of the forces of populism and the conservative governing class that came to power with Ronald Reagan lasted through the first george bush was kind of moved up to capitol hill during the republican revolution. And Newt Gingrich and then came back down pennsylvania avenue with George W Bush, that that conservative governing class, which existed for really about 30 years, has been spced once the full program, any time online at book tv dot or just search Matthew Continetti or the title of his book, the right book tv continues. Now, television for serious readers. Recently on book tvs Author Interview program. Afterwards, former defense secretary mark esper talked about his time serving in the trump administration. Heres a portion of that interview. One of the things, you know, i wrestled with a lot. You go back to the book sacred oath, the oath to the constitution. But part of the constitution is article two, which establishes the president. Hes the commander in chief. And and youre also bound to obey his lawful orders. And, you know, in many ways, i was fortunate because President Trump really issued orders. But for the the germany case. But kind of walk through these things sequentially, youre right. In terms of our ukraine assistance, which we were obligated to do under the law because congress appropriated it would be me at times or me and john bolton or john bolton and mike pompeo. And i would engage the president and kind of push him to release the Security Assistance for ukraine. It eventually happened. We learned why later. I at least did through the media, why he was holding it up. But that wasnt a case where my duty was to go back to him and push and press and make every possible argument i could to get that released and i talk about it in the book in other cases with, you know, naito or in the case where i got the written order to withdraw troops from germany. My game plan was to really get my commander. Now were talking about Combatant Commander general todd walters for european command. I gave him a series of principles. I wanted to do some planning off of that. I would reassure our allies. I would deter russia, take care of our troops. Five things. And he came back with a pretty good concept that at the end of day met the president s direct order to withdraw troops. But at the same time, allow me to take those troops that we withdrew from germany and either consolidate them in other countries or eventually push them forward closer to russia, which meant they met these principles i had defined as reassure allies and deter russia. And i thought it was a very clever idea put forward by by the combat commander. I endorsed it. We briefed it to the president. He knew exactly what we were doing when i briefed him and it met what he wanted. And so i thought it was again, i didnt like its origin, but what we came up with the end of the day was a workable solution to meet the president s intent. But for me to do it in a way that made strategic sense, that bolstered our presence in europe and that deterred the russians. And look wheree are today. Afterwards, as a weekly Interview Program with relevant guest hosts interviewing top nonfiction authors about latest work. To watch this program and others, visit book tv. Morgan