New book we should have seen it coming. I am curious so lets just start with my personal favorite which is the first meeting between donald trump and steve bannon who would become a very influential political strategist and his world where he explains to trump hes thinking from running for president he cannot do it as a traditional republican and describe the scene. Yes. Thank you for having me. It made no sense but you have to remember donald trump did not just come out out of the blue he talked for years running for president but he wasnt quite sure he knew he was he is identity sometimes independent sometimes democrat it in a looked at Ross Perot Reform Party at one point but at 2012 he was getting serious. David about she a conservative activist, hardline was a friend of donald trump said he decided to talk to him about running for president and he took his friend steve bannon to new york to a meeting at trump tower to talk about the possibility he runs as the outsider how would he do it . David sits down and says this is the way even as a traditional reagan republican thats almost real republicans ran at that point and steve bannon says something different. That will not we want will not work anymore you have to run as our populace like pat buchanan and ross perot and says there is a new populist movement in the country. Donald trump looked at steve bannon and he says youre right thats lame popular rest and he got the terminology mangled but he said hes right it has to be as a popular rest to make it popular and all about him and then of course he doesnt decide to run in 2012 for four years later thats exactly what he does and in the meantime between 2012 and 2016 he starts to about that populist message were a lot of starting points for the trump love you one revolutions. It really is from the very beginning. Very much. He doesnt have an ideology i interviewed Newt Gingrich a couple times and he is fascinating with a lot of insights into this. There is a fouryear period of the conservative revolution from reagan and 79 when he wants from president to Donald Trumps arrival of where we are today so gingrich puts his sights on that. And he says he is not a conservative. He is anti liberal and he thinks a lot of that liberal speaking is nonsense doesnt have a philosophy he doesnt read the National Review which is the bible for modernday conservativism. He is an instinct player and it is about him that is fine with the supporters of one of the things we learned and 2016 you have to be a traditional conservative or even how the ideology at this point political history its as important as what you are for. What makes this different from other political books it is with an autobiographical thread even with the title we should have seen it coming. How did you come up with this title and what we were attempting to do . That was not my plan you are a journalist to think about something in the first person is exceptional and uncomfortable but when i got into the project it was where did donald trump come from . I got very interested in the starting point which i decided was 1979 with the carter presidency collapsing he gives a speech and throws up his hands and says marianne terrible trouble and then the country is prepared to return to Ronald Reagan and that began a for a decade. Of conservative influence. So the conservative movement through the for the year. Was the most interesting and perhaps the most powerful Political Movement of the time. So i decided that was the story i would tell how it rose to prominence and power and is somehow involved taking donald trump to be the standardbearer by 2016. Talking with my editor at random house he said that is the work of your career . That is true. I covered the washington journal in 1980 and following the story ever since the editor of random house said you should put yourself in the book you missed a lot of this you should tell us what it was like to be there. Thats how that came about. It wasnt my idea but once i accepted the idea seemed like a good way to insert occasionally to say i saw the convention and thats what it felt like or interviewed clinton at that point and that is what it sounded like i hope its not too intrusive i hope to humanize the story a little better but it is not a natural or a comfortable place for a journalist to land. Lets talk about 1980. Ronald reagan represented a number of things very traditional conservative principles free trade, smaller government, stronger military in some ways an internationalist also comes along with this optimistic upbeat view of the world that the country like jimmy carter that malaise. It is a shot of selfconfidence that the country really needs at that moment. People forget but remember one of the fondest memories that by 1979 peoples of the presidency is to be a good job really one person to handle we need a domestic policy and Foreign Policy that is how beleaguered the white house was with the Carter Administration at that point reagan walks through explicitly this is nonsense. This is america. We can do this has put ourselves together and move forward. That was the attitude but the philosophy was conservative. 1976, four years earlier reagan tried to take the nomination away from gerald ford in the party and the country that hes too conservative that is too far out there but by 1980 reagan had a move but the country was brady it has as much to do with carters your as much as reagan successful what really happened in 80 i appreciate he took a core message he had developed for years and expanded it and fleshed it out. So first of all his economic philosophy as he took supplyside economics from jack kemp and said im not for balancing the budget but a big tax cut so he had a conservative and then aligned with religious conservatives that was a revolutionary idea that those in the evangelical movement out of the church is into that Political MovementRonald Reagan went to them and they came to Ronald Reagan and they linked arms and with the economic conservative and then he made common cause those hawkish democrats very anti soviet and will use of bringing them into the coalition with the anti communism that hold the group together for so many years provided the glue that kept it together and created a coalition now there is this conservative message thats fully formed and thats what reagan but to the table in the 1980s. All the was not entirely clear to get these massive tax cuts for the next thing that happens is they are hit by a recession going back on those economic policies implemented in his first year. Thats a good point of the cut taxes and everything came back to life there is a giant tax cut his first year in Office Almost exactly what he asked what was considered dangerous revolutionary. The deficit exploded republicans were crazy nervous it continued the economy was going down at look like it could for a while be a colossal failure and so much so in 1982 republicans or conventional conservatives to push through congress the tax bill because they were so worried of the tax cuts opening up and then will the deficit spending the government had been cut finally kicked in by 1982 things started to take off but there was are. It was a gambler. It was not an instant success by any stretch of the imagination. You also write how at this time there was a scaffolding or infrastructure being built so that reaganism would outlast reagan so talk about that for those who were traveling with him and the think tanks and outside organizations. Yes. As you know you get a tour book you come up to the review we are things are clearer that way sometimes and this is one of the things i did not appreciate at the time it happened so incrementally i didnt grasp it when you go back and look you realize one of the things that happened in the first reagan term in particular was the construction of a conservative infrastructure to support the reagan revolution liberals had an infrastructure like think tanks and supporters and Money Organization and activist era and beyond that supported what they were doing conservatives didnt have that and so that took various forms when a Grover Norquist created at the behest of the Reagan White House which one in a group out there in societies to support our taxcutting regiment answer firepower from outside to support what we are doing. A very sleepy Little Organization to recruit wiccans to run for state legislature. Newt gingrich takes it over and put it on steroids now all of a sudden you have a giant nationwide farm team for conservatives to be developed and the governorships and house races off he will abide Newt Gingrichs ideas. So describe the technology by which they do this because i have long thought that the happiest coincidence and his entire political career was the fact he and the cspan cameras arrived at the House Chamber practically at the same moment. So he spread his message to the cspan audience for talk about the tapes. He had two technologies at the time were cutting edge the same ridiculous now but one was the cspan cameras he figured that if you show up Late Afternoon on the floor of the house the cameras were on and cspan were showing what was happening to the country but there was nothing happening so you step in and fill the vacuum to give regular order speeches so he starts to spread the gospel because you have a platform. He does that. But he also uses cassette tapes which seems ridiculous now but he figured out all those republican wannabes who wanted to be conservative reagan foot soldiers but the needed instruction and talking points and practical advice. He says way we can do versus make tape recordings of things republicans should say and do and now if they were run for office as a conservative incense amount of thousands across the country to grassroots young republican politicians who are meant to take the cassette tapes, and the car is going from event to event and listen to them and basically getting how to instructions and indoctrination from Newt Gingrich on the campaign trail and this turns a whole generation of young republican conservatives into Newt Gingrich republican conservatives were all basically playing by the same playbook. He does all those things then the nra becomes more Political Organization will buy a Democrat John dingell who is an outdoorsman and very much guns rights kind of democrat saying they should defend gun rights not just talk about outdoor conservation and hunting and fishing and that happened and then crucially the other organization that is created was a Federalist Society which is again a completely novel ide idea, and organization of conservative legalist warriors and law professors which has created to experiment one expand the legal gospel and then it turns out is an organization readymade to recruit federal conservative judges. The Federalist Society is created during the incubator. And it starts to recommend people and then promote conservatives who are nominated to be judges for federal and state now today the Federalist Society is the most important force pushing conservative judges onto federal branches and the Supreme Court and basically running that Party Operation for the Trump White House , started doing the reagan years. So the Heritage Foundation. Things that are going on beneath file under your nose but there was a sense early on, just before the reagan years in the late seventies some people had a sense there needed to be a conservative machine in washington to counter the liberal machine and one of the people interested was the coolers. Vagueness on magnate from colorado very conservative wanting to know how to assert himself so he sends a letter to a colorado senator want to come to town and talk about how to spend money to spread the conservative gospel and he want to give a big check to that aei there were no notable conservative think tank at the time this was intercepted and add folder among others is aware of this trip so he hijacks the trip and arranges to me which is of course. Mom joseph coolers said we should have a small conservative green beret think tank that doesnt just put out the white papers while they are creating action so he arrange that meeting with joseph coors so he realizes will have more impact if it doesnt happen in washington but if it does in the white house when nixon was still in office and then a likeminded conservative from california was working in the white house so they arrange for this meeting to be held in lens office in the Old Executive Office building to impress joseph coors he says these guys think i should give them money to start a new conservative think tank i think aei is here and i give them my money . Will arrange this ahead of time he walks over to his bookshelf was off the shelf the aei study blows dust off of it which she put the ahead of time gathering desk one dust this is what we do at aei studies here they go on the bookshelf giving money to these guys so joseph coors cut a Check Balance on rent a townhouse in the Heritage Foundation is born because one of the partners is walking through his neighborhood in Fairfax County and he sees the Group Housing division called the Heritage Homes so they call the Heritage Foundation and the rest is history now a giant multimillion dollar per year conservative think tank with the reagan agenda is still active today but had the seeds illness. With conservatives got started. Host over the 1980s going into the nineties is the language of politics begins to shift becomes a much rougher, darker lingo he is the leader to pay the acolyt acolyte. And that is a big change and is driven by more than one Newt Gingrich more than anybody else and then to talk about welfare moms but it didnt really last. People dont think of reagan as a fighter and the personal sense of famously to have their with tip oneill and that is a little bit exaggerated those that wanted to get along with everybody Newt Gingrich arrived and said conservatives to go along with the majority and then to fight them so he pulled a much more futuristic style and that with to write the democratic speaker of the house and then to have those ethical shortcomings the social the book he had written for which he was gaining the proceeds from book sales with protocol profiteering so he uses the cspan time to go after the democrats in very harsh terms and basically he turns the tenor of the conversation in a different direction. That has a lot of impact within the Republican Party because basically this all plays out in part while george h. W. Bush has become president and he is a very mainstream personality as the parties slowly taken over by the Newt Gingrich forces pushing a much harsher and combat a view of the world not even consistent philosophically but the tone talking with rahm emanuel also the leading member of the house in many ways going back to the clinton years by the arrival is the main figure in those movements not when donald trump arrived the became the leading spokesman for the movement and then to have such a departure from Ronald Reagan in tone and style that was the end of the reagan. As you get into the early nineties that you do to part from what Ronald Reagan would recognize as conservative philosophy and for the first time the first strains populism shows up in the party talk about where that came from. So the real canary in the coal mine was pat buchanan he was a Nixon White House aide he worked for Ronald Reagan and loved him but then by the early 19 nineties he decides the conservative message has missed a beat not working out enough for workingclass americans moving into the Republican Party for cultural reasons. And so they are moving into the Republican Party and pat buchanan thinks they will be hurt with a free trade message so we can move to mexico immigrants are moving in we have to stop that. He is quite eloquent and he says i began to develop a different view of what conservativism really is and should be very much early donald trump and anti free trade anti nafta anti immigration. Anti imports from abroad Program American these are pharisees and pat buchanan begins pushing them and 92 and then 96. And he is dismissed as a cultural warrior because he is also pushing the agenda of the religious right at the same time. So nothing then a cultural warrior pushing the social agenda. But the importance of pat buchanan with that message. And from that point with the 92 campaign with a serious one for president to hurt george h. W. Bush running for reelection, it hurts a minute campaign. From that campaign 1982 to the Trump Campaign in 2161 poster who does polling for us at the wall street journal and nbc news that at one point donald trump is pat buchanan with his own airplane that is how similar the messages are. That is the first sign there is movement within the Republican Party but also the potential for a spokesman to