I say that without any, in utter earnestness. Its really great to be able to turn on the tv and see serious discussions about books and literature x its great to have them here in austin and to be a part of it. My name is dan oppenheimer, im the moderator today. I think im here moderating these books because i wrote a book a few years ago about prominent americans who went from the left to the right of the political spectrum, and your panel today is really about american conservativism. Its sort of past, present and future. And the no, sir i have with me the authors i have with me today are anne nelson and tom lobianco. I just want to remind everyone that anne and tom will be in the signing tent after this. Their books are for sale in the book tent. Anne let me know that this is, her book actually doesnt come out til later in this coming week, but they made a special exception for austinen. So if you want the special right, hot off the presses before anybody else can get it copies of her book, theyre available, and shell be available to sign them, and tom will be available to sign his book. So let me introduce our two authors. Im going to talk to them and theyre going to talk to each other for about a half hour, and then well have about 15 minutes for questions from the audience. You can see the mic right up here in the middle aisle, so you can maybe start lining up a little bit before that time, and well get to as many questions as we can. So anne nelson has received a livingston award for her journalism and a guggenheim fellowship for her historical research, a graduate of yale university. Shes taught at Columbia University for over two decades, first at the psychological of journalism and then at the school of at the school of journalism. Shes a member of the new york council of humanities. Her previous books include red orchestra and suzannes children, a finalist for the National Jewish book award. Shes a native of oklahoma, which we may talk about, and now lives in new york city, and her book today is Shadow Network media money and the secret hub of the radical right. Tom lobianco is a longtime mike pence reporter. I dont know if thats on your Business Card [laughter] but he has covered mike pence from the statehouse to white house for a host of organizations including the associated press, cnn and the indianapolis star. Hes a regular political analyst on National Television and radio. And he is not currently employed as a staff writer anywhere because he has been writing this book and now touring the on it for the last six months or so [laughter] it feels like that. But his book is piety and power mike pence and the taking of the white house. So i have kind of a similar question for both of you or which is give me an origin story for your subject. So for mike pence or the council for National Policy. And it doesnt have to be the whole story, but just give me an origin story that helps explain why were here talking about them and why they matter. Sure. So i started covering mike pence when he ran for governor. He launched for governor of indiana in june 2011, and ive covered a number of governors in maryland, in indiana, plenty of politicians over the years. I can tell you that he is absolutely the most boring person ive ever [laughter] and to be honest with you, i felt like every, like, i would go to these events, and he was so adept at being boring that we never really got much out of them. And when he became Vice President , im like, i just felt like we had to crack, we had to crack the veil. It just, we had to break past it to understand him. And as it turns out, theres quite a bit there. Theres more to this guy than we ever understood. One of my longtime sources put it this way, he says boring is his camouflage. So, yeah. [laughter] and in my case, i have lived in new york city for many years, but i always go back and visit my participants in my parents in stillwater, oklahoma, quite often. And my origin story was around 2004, and i was driving to walmart as we all do, and i had the radio on, and i just turned the channel. I got to a broadcast that was a religious callin show where the moderator was saying that if john kerry became president , he would instill gay marriage, and that would make everyones marriage to, between a man and a woman, threatened. And this woman called in and said ive been married to my husband for 50 years, you mean we wont be legally married . [laughter] no, maam, your marriage will be in danger if john kerry becomes president. And i was, like, thats not right. [laughter] so i just kind of tucked that away. And then as i went on and i do, ive done a lot of Media Research at columbia and, of course, we looked at International Media systems and digital transformations and so on. I was, like, what about radio . What about the political power of radio . What about radio in states where people drive a lot in their cars. And i went back to that Radio Station and found out that it was a network with a hundred stations, and it was affiliated with another one that had another hundred stations, and it was affiliated with a third that had over a hundred stations, and it distributed con p tent over content to over 2,000 other stations. And much of the content was this kind of onesided political messaging that had nothing to do with journalism. So so i started connecting the dots which led back to the council for National Policy, which led to my book. So, and, you know, well get more into sort of what the council for National Policy is and what mike pence is. Theres a question i want to ask you, because when were dealing with sort of politicallycharged subject the in a highly politicallycharged, politicallypolarized time, its very easy to sort of fall into a posture of skepticism or cynicism towards the people who represent politics other than yours. And so i want to push you guys and ask you what, in your best estimation and you are the experts on these people and organizations what do you believe they believe . Why are they doing what theyre doing . What makes mike pence run, you know, and what is at the heart, what ises the vision of america or the desire for what america would be at the heart of the council for National Policy as they see it . Hmm. [laughter] you know, the thing with mike pence, and, you know, i try to get into this, when i was doing the research and the reporting, you find that theres not a very fixed core for him. In many ways hes a, almost a stereotype of a politician; sticking his finger in the breeze to see which way its blowing. But there is, there are certain benchmarks on him. He does feel that he is called to this. I take that, i do take that to be seriously, whether or not anyone agrees with, youre, with that, they believe that. Him and his wife. Called by god. Called by god, yes. Yeah. Based you know, let me, two anecdotes that i think help explain him. And hes a middle child, and my apologies [laughter] im the oldest of three, so yeah. A lot to say. [laughter] in the 1970s he is in middle school. Its Catholic Grade School in columbus, indiana, st. Columbus. And i was talking with one of his High School Friends x they told me that, you know, he would always talk about wanting to be president. But one day he comes back to school, and he tells all his classmates that his mother had toll him that told him that he should be president. Its that push, that affirmation you dont see him actively running for president until three decades later, and what is it with him . Hes not a leader, hes a follower. Thats fundamentally i call him a lagging indicator of where the politics of the moment is. [laughter] when my editor and i were working on this that would have been a good title for the book, by the way, lagging indicator the biography of mike pence. All right. When you dont see him actively, and i didnt even notice this until i finished writing the book and started talking about it more, i did not see it because i was so thick in the weeds that i could not appreciate it, he does not actively start running for president until somebody pushes him to run for president. And who is that somebody . Or somebodies . And the answer is the could be ill for National Policy. Council for National Policy. In 2008. And thats, and thats when he actively starts running for president. So hes not a driven person. Hes more of a pushed person. Another good title for your book. [laughter] so to some extent the answer, tom, is we dont know, i mean, we dont know, maybe theres not an answer to the what makes mike pence run other than other people, but there very much is an answer to what makes the could be ill of National Policy push. Yeah. Its a group of fundamentalists, many of them based in oklahoma, texas and louisiana, who see the Public Acceptance of homosexuality as a threat, and they are driving that and trying to roll back political and civil rights for the lgbt population. Quite actively. And also to establish themselves as having a kind of dominion over every aspect of life because they say that they have a direct communication with god who instructs them how to rule over the rest of us. Another branch of the organization or another part of the hub the extractive industries. Again, based in oklahoma, texas and louisiana, Oil Interests. And they object strenuously to environmental regulations that protect pure air and water and prevent toxic waste dumps and other things because it is detrimental to their profits. They also object to taxes, and they wish to do away with the social programs that are [inaudible] that serve public education, Public Health and other benefits to the public. And then theres a third group within the council for National Policy which are the operatives, and they have a very sophisticated understanding of the american electoral system. Especially the state level which is something that the Democratic Party lost over the last decade or two. And is so theyve worked at a state level to be very effective, they looked at statehouses and put a lot of energy into winning statehouses across the country. They then worked with the courts to create legal structures that benefit their political ambitions. And another part of their operation is to work intrinsically inside evangelical and fundamentalist churches. So were talking about putting voter guides in the church bulletin, were talking about downloading entire Church Directories to use for electioneering. To the extent that americans expect a separation of church and state, they would disagree. So, and this is in a way an unfair question, but im going to ask anyway just because not everybody in the audience has read the books yet. But could you both give me the kind of incredibly abbreviated chronology of this person or this organization just so so we start and you dont need to go, tom, first [laughter] but his political career and then the cnp, how do we get from 1981 or maybe 1967 to 2019 just so people understand the arc but in, you know, 500 words or less. Go. [laughter] you know, hold on a second, i brought something with me that helps explain mike pence. I dont know if you guys can see this right here. This is corn seed from his boyhood, the backyard of his boyhood home in columbus, indiana, the end of hall creek boulevard. This is where i started with him, and it helps explain him so well. Whenever he was deflecting questions about whether he would run for president , he would always say, his throwaway line was im just a kid from a small town in Southern Indiana who grew up with a cornfield in his backyard. And i would hear that as somebody as a coastal, right, as somebody from baltimore, and i would think to myself its like a John Mellencamp video, right . [laughter] can and then i went to columbus, indiana, and it was not like a John Mellencamp video. Its a very distinguished town. Its kind of an oasis in there. And i always wondered why is he doing that . Why is he misrepresenting his town . We drove, in february 2018, my family was with me, my wife and daughter x two of his old neighbors. We were taking a tour of the city. And we drove to his house, and there was a cornfield behind his old boyhood home, and i couldnt believe it. Id never believed there was an actual cornfield. And the answer was that he had lived in a family that was the suburban dream of the 1950s and the 1960s always moving into the newest subdevelopment that was eating into the cornfield around columbus, indiana. This is mike pence. This is his style of misdirection, the political style of misdirection. And this is why, this is partially how i came to these findings that he is not a theocrat, for instance. I think theres a lot of people that would like to see him as a theocrat, including himself. He likes to let people see him as a theocrat. Some of his sources told me this. You know, thats why his daughter wrote i suspect its why his daughter wrote an oped in the Washington Times saying my book was an attack on people of faith everywhere. Because once you start to peel away at the mask, he has to put it back up. This is functionally e who he is. Hes constantly changing, and i saw this in 1988, he runs for congress for the first time. He runs as a newt gingrichtrained republican. He drops that facade later, starts campaigning for pat buchanan, supporting pat buchanan in the 1992 race against george w. Bush. Later drops that, becomes a kris canright guy, become crisp chanright guys, becomes a tea partier after that, drops that. Like so many things with donald trump, he moves so fast and so chaotic that he exposes a lot of the, well call it the hypocrisy. The old Indiana Republican chairman use to say theres hypocrisy and highpocrisy. And the rapidity, the rapidness of that change becomes apart when he flips on a dime from being a quasitechnocratic establishment republican to a neopopulist, you know, demagogue republican. Thats who this i mean, this is who mike pence is. And i should say that my last two books were about antinazi resistance movements in berlin and occupied paris, so i never really intended to come back and write about this part of the country. But i felt compelled to given recent developments. So i found that the down ill for National Policy council for National Policy had its roots in texas, and it was at a time when, actually, i was growing up in oklahoma, and all of the protestant denominations that were in town were gradually liberalizing. Civil Rights Movement was going on, the Womens Movement was going on, and they were all adjusting. Including the Southern Baptist convention. They were liberalizing their attitudes on a number of fronts, and two gentlemen from texas who might be gentlemen objected, and they undertook a kind of campaign within the Southern Baptist convention to purge moderates and instill hardliners who would roll back the Southern Baptists on these social issues. And in 1980 these Groups Joined forces in thats with ronald ray began and found Ronald Reagan and found a way to present reagan as a fundamentalist candidate, which he wasnt really in terms of his identity. And they got behind reagan and pushed, along with the southern strategy, and that opened up a new era in american politics. In 1981, the following year, the council for National Policy was formed with the fundamentalists, the reaganites, the Oil Interests from texas, oklahoma and louisiana. And it grew over the years trying to develop strategy that could deal with the fact that they were losing momentum in Public Opinion. Americans are increasingly learning that having homosexual family members anding neighbors is not a threat to their security. There are all kinds of things that are favor by Public Opinion such as background checks for firearms, and they kept pushing back to see how they could manipulate the electoral system to overcome the trends in Public Opinion. So they kept striking deals with National Politicians who would then back away from their social and economic prescriptions. And 2016 was where it really all came together. They liked mike pence as a president ial candidate but felt he wasnt quite ready yet. Theyd been grooming him, as tom said, for years. They got behind ted cruz and pushed hard. But cruz lost the primary, and then they had a moment of crisis. And i describe it in the book, june 21, 2016, they invited a thousand fundamentalist leaders from all over the country to sodom and gomorrah, new york city [laughter] to meet trump on his home ground, and they cut a deal. And the deal was pretty transparently that they would lend their ground troops, their data operations which were very advanced and their strategists to the Trump Campaign in exchange for three vital elements. One was allowing them to fully participate in the selection of federal judges and the nominations, which theyve advanced very rapidly, one was an evangelical council that was dominated by members of the council for National Policy. So trump, who is formerly a presbyterian, has a evangelical Advisory Council without any representatives of catholicism, judaism, even mainline protestants. Its all evangelical