look, i think we need to have a change of heart, we need to publicly disavow that stance we took with ryan. his guys said, what are you crazy? we just wrote this op-ed. the decision was do we get accused of being a flip-flopper now or allow trump it bludgeon us on the issue of trade? it speaks volumes about where people were at that point in the party because, again, you spoke to it a second ago. the rate of change is what is so whiplash-inducing at this point. this didn t happen over a period of 30 or 40 or 50 years, you can even consolidate it down into a period of 36 months in which some core bedrock republican principles that had been held since the reagan era have essentially been thrown out the window. everyone marvels at the trump relationship to evangelical voters, who in donald trump s own words are privately referred to in your own book at the f-ing evangelicals. it s a term of endearment. i should note. you know, so it s fascinating.
party because, again, you spoke to it a second ago. the rate of change is what is so whiplash-inducing at this point. this didn t happen over a period of 30 or 40 or 50 years, you can even consolidate it down into a period of 36 months in which some core bedrock republican principles that had been held since the reagan era have essentially been thrown out the window. everyone marvels at the trump relationship to evangelical voters, who in donald trump s own words are privately referred to in your own book at the f-ing evangelicals. it s a term of endearment. i should note. you know, so it s fascinating. obviously we re all transfixed on this relationship between the the white evangelical republican voter and donald trump. and obviously this is a group of voters who had spent years
self-identifying republicans. 90%, which is a very, very good figure. no republican in the last century say for george w. bush in the aftermath of 9/11 has been more popular with their party s base, not reagan, not clinton, nobody, than trump is right now. so he has this very solid following in the base. he was joking about this with some republican senators. he leaned back and had this look of satisfaction on his face and he said those f-ing evangelicals. i talk to two senators who were in that hearing in that meeting, one of them told me that he thought he was hallucinating. there is no way i just heard that. he walked out of the meeting. they turned to each other and said, he said those f-ing evangelicals. that anecdote was reported out of the book. it might bother them a little bit, but these folks who believe that trump has given them two supreme court justices, that is he on their side about fights about abortion and religious liberty and everything else, they are willing to to