Have seen it coming. In theory i would like to start with what was my personal favorite moment in the book which is the first meeting between donald trump and steve bannon who would become a very influential political strategist in his world where he explains to trump that if hes thinking about running for president , he cannot do as a traditional republican. Can you describe the scene. Sure, thanks for having me, i was fascinated buy the book, it made no sense by this, one of the reasons you have to remember donald trump did not, as a bolt out of the blue, he had been speaking for years for running for president but he was not quite sure how he would really have an identity, sometimes he was a democrat, sometimes he was a republican, he flirted with the idea of running in ross perots at one point but in 2012 he was getting serious about it and david bossi, a conservative activist a hardline conservative activist was a friend of Donald Trumps and he decided to talk to him about running for president and they took his friend steve bannon who did not know donald trump up to a meeting at trump towers to talk about this if donald trump is going to run as an outsider, how would he do it, david bossi sat down with steve bannon and donald trump and says here is you run a traditional reagan republican which is kind of the way all republicans ran at that point. In steve bannon speaks up and says something different, he says thats not going to work anymore, if youre going to run you need to run as a populist and pat buchanan in ross perot and basically said there is a new populist mood in the country and donald trump looks at steve bannon and steve bannon tells a story and says thats what i am, im a popular wrist, not a populist popular wrist, he got the knowledge he mingle, but hes right, if hes going to run hes going to take populism maka popular make it all about him and then he doesnt decide to run in 2012 but four years later that is exactly what he does. In the meantime between 2012 and 2016 he actually starts holding the populist message, i think theres a lot of starting point for the trump revolution, that is one of the more intriguing ones. Its really a from the very beginning that trump has been all about the writing testament. Very much so, i interviewed knew greek georgNewt Gingrich, g in the. Of the book tells us the 40 year period of the conservative revolution from Ronald Reagan in 1979 when he starts to run for president to Donald Trumps arrival of where we are today and Newt Gingrich has a lot of insight of the hole. One of the things he said to me is that donald trump is not a conservative, hes an antiliberal, he takes a lot of liberals speaking is nonsense but he does have a philosophy or read the National Review which is the bible of modernday conservatism, hes in instinct player, it is about him and thats all fine with his supporters, that is one of the things that we learned in 2016 you dont have to be a traditional conservative, you dont have to have an ideology, which are against at this point in our political history isnt as important as what youre for. One thing that makes its really different from so many other political books is there is also an autobiographical thread that goes through, even the title you should have seen it coming as a firstperson world, how did you come up with this title and what were you attempting to do at this. That is interesting, it was not my plan, youre a journalist, im a journalist, to think about something in the first person is exceptionally uncomfortable, thats not what i intended, but when i got into this project it was an attempt to explain where the donald trump come from, i got very interested in the starting point, the starting point i decided was 1979 with the carter presidency collapses, carter gives them a speech and throws up his hands and says were in terrible trouble, the country has been prepared to turn to Ronald Reagan who wins the presidency in 1980 and that began a four decade. Of conservative influence in the countrys political, the conservative movement was through the 40 year. The most interesting and perhaps the most powerful Political Movement of the time, i decided that that was the story i was going to tell in which a story and how the conservative Movement Rose to providence and power under Ronald Reagan is somehow involved to picking donald trump to be the standard bearer by 2016. When i talked with my editor at random house about it, he said that is the arc of your career, it is true, i arrived in washington to cover washington for the wall street journal in 1980, in the spring of 1980 and then ive been following the story ever since and he said that you should put yourself in the book, you witnessed a lot of this that youre going to write about, you should tell us what it was like to be there so thats how that came about, it was not my idea but once i accepted the idea it did seemed like a good way to insert myself occasionally in the story by saying i sell this convention, heres what it felt like or i interviewed bill clinton at that point and this is what it sounded like, i hope its not too intrusive, i hope it humanizes the story a little bit but as i said is not a natural or comfortabl comfortable placer journalists to land. With talk about 1980, Ronald Reagan represented a lot of things, he did represent very traditional conservative principles, free trade, smaller government, stronger military, he was in some ways an internationalist buddy also comes along with an optimistic upbeat view of the world and something that the country after jimmy carter in the period that you write about, the malaise. Shot of selfconfidence that the country really needs at that moment. People forget, i certainly remember because it was one of the formative memories of my political memories, in 1949 they said the presidency is too great of job for any one person to handle maybe we need to split into and have it invested policy uniform policy, thats how the Carter White House was at that point. Youre right Ronald Reagan walked through the door and he said explicitly, this is nonsense, this is america, we can do this, lets pull herself together and move forward, that was the attitude. The philosophy was, with conservative, it was 19764 years earlier Ronald Reagan tried to take the nomination away from gerald florida in the Republican Party and the probabl country dd hes too conservative, that is too far out there, but in 1980 Ronald Reagan hadnt moved but the country was ready for, as much to do with carters failure as reagan success, there you have it. What really happened in 1980 that i did not appreciate until he did the book was Ronald Reagan took a basic core message that he had developed for years and expanded and flushed it out. How does that happen, first of all his economic philosophy became a little clear because he took supplies from economics from jack kemp and said im not for balancing the budget, and for a big tax cut that will spur the economy, yet a conservative message that had a little more own to it, and then he reunited with religious conservatives, that did not happen that was a revolution the idea that people in them angelical movement would get out of the churches into the Political Movement, that had not happened before certainly on the scale and Ronald Reagan went to them and they came to Ronald Reagan and they linked bonds and that was the second leg, yet economic conservatives and social religious conservatives and then he made common cause with the neoconservatives, the hawkish democrats in foreignpolicy who are very antisoviet, much called warriors and he dumped them into the coalition and that is where the anticommunism that held this group together for so many years kinda provided the glue that kept it all together. And what Ronald Reagan did was put all those three elements together and created a coalition and suddenly there was not just the conservative message, there was a fully formed conservative platform and thats what reagan brought to the table in 1980. Also it isnt entirely clear that at the beginning it is going to succeed, he gets through the massive tax cuts, his Economic Program but then the next thing it happens, he gets hit by a big recession and they have to pull back and some of the economic policies. Thats a good point and its all forgotten, the mythology of reagan, he cut taxes and everything came back to life, that was not true at all, the giant tax cut in 1981 in this first year in office and thats exactly what he asked for it was considered dangerous and revolutionary and it did not work right away, the deficit exploded, republicans were crazy nervous as what it happened, the recession continued, the economy was going down, this is like it might be for a while a colossal failure and in fact so much so that in 1982 republicans, more conventional conservatives led by among others, bob dylan, robert baker pushed through congress a tax bill that took back the tax because they were so worried about the deficits that were opening up and then eventually the combination of deficit spending frankly because the government had been cut much and the tax cuts finally kicked in and by 1982 things started to kickoff but there was that. In which this might be as howard baker refrigerant that wasnt going to work, i read that that wouldve gone bust, it was not an a success by any structure of the imagination. You also write about at this time there was a scaffolding and infrastructure being built so that reaganism would outlast reagan, can you talk a little bit about that in those who were traveling with him on this road and the establishment of think tanks and outside organizations. This again when you do a book you get the chance to look through the Rearview Mirror and things are suddenly clear that way then looking at the front windshield, this is one of the things that i did not appreciate at the time, i looked through it but it happened so incrementally that i did not grasp it when you go back and look, you realize whatd the things that happened in the first reagan term and particularly all through the reagan years was the construction of a conservative infrastructure that could support the reagan revolution, it did not exist, liberals had an infrastructure, think tanks and networks of supporters and money organization, activist, all through the new deal era and beyond the supported what they were doing, conservatives did not have that they created that and it took various forms, the form of americans for tax reform, new organization created at the Reagan White House which wanted a group out there in society somewhere to support our taxcutting regimen and to lend some firepower for outside to support what were doing, that gets created, you have a go pack which is a sleepy Little Organization that tried to recruit republicans that ran for state legislators, Newt Gingrich takes it over and puts it on steroids and all of a sudden you have a giant nationwide farm team of republicans and conservatives being developed at state level offices, governorships and house races, theyre all being fueled by Newt Gingrichs idea. Can i interrupt, describe the technology by which they are doing this because i have thought long thought that the happiest coincidence on Newt Gingrich entire political career was the fact that he and the cspan cameras arrived on the House Chamber at practically the same moment, he is spreading his message through cspan but to talk a little bit about the tapes. Newt gingrich used to technologies of the time that were cuttingedge in seem ridiculous now, one of them, you say cspan cameras, he figured out if you showed up Late Afternoon on the floor of the house the cameras were on and cspan was showing what was happening to the country but there was nothing happening, you step in and fill regular order speeches and you start to basically spread the gospel because you havent made platform that is available, he does that but he also uses cassette tapes which seems ridiculous now, he figured out that there was all these republican wannabes who wanted to be conservative soldiers but they needed instruction and talking point and they needed practical advice so he figures out the way i can do this all make cassette tape recordings of things republican should say, due in no heavy wonder bread has conservatives and he sends them out by the thousands across the country to grassroots, young republican politicians who are meant to take the cassette tapes, put them in their cars when theyre going from event to event and listen to them and their basically getting howto instructions in indoctrination from Newt Gingrich as they go through their days on the campaign trail and this turns a whole generation of young republican conservatives into Newt Gingrich republican conservatives who are basically playing by the same playbook. So he says all of those things and at the same time the nra becomes a more Political Organization field on by a Democrat John dingell who is an outdoorsman very much guns right kind of democrat who basically convinces the nra they should defend gun rights not just talk about outdoor conservation and hunting and fishing, that happens in crucially the other organization that gets created was a federal society which was a completely novel idea, an organization of conservative legalist lawyers and law professors which is created to extend and spread the conservative legal gospel but then it turns out its an organization that is readymade to recruit federal conservative judges, so the federal society is created during this incubator. In a start to recommend people and promote conservatives who are nominated to be judges, federal and state judges and now where we live today the federal society is the most important for pushing conservative judges onto federal benches and the Supreme Court in all of washington basically running that part of the operation for the Trump White House and for Mitch Mcconnell the republican leader in the senate and all that started during the reagan years. Then you have a funny story of the creation of the Heritage Foundation and essentially in the office. This again are things that were going on right under your nose that you did not know at the time, there was a sense early on, just before the reagan years in the late 70s some people had a sense they needed to be a conservative machine to counter the liberal machine and one of the people who is interested in doing this was joseph the coors beer out colorado, very conservative and interesting to how to assert himself, he sends a letter to the colorado senator saying im going to come to town and i would like to talk about how to spend money to spread the conservative gospel. And he has in mind probably give it a big check to the American Enterprise institute which was the one notable conservative think tank the time. This letter is intercepted and ed full nerve among a couple of other people is aware of this and he basically hijacks and arranges to meet with joseph so then they got a better idea, we should have a very aggressive small conservative think tank in washington, that doesnt just put out white papers that people read and put on their shelf but thats out there creating action, so he arranges to have a meeting with joseph coors to talk about this idea but full nerve is a smart guy he realized that this will have more impact if it does not happen in a restaurant in a hotel in Downtown Washington but if it happens in the white house where Richard Nixon was still in office at the time in lynn who was a likeminded conservative from california was working in the white house, they arrange for this meeting to be held in his office in the Old Executive Office building to impress joseph coors and they walk into the meeting and joseph courses these guys think i should give the money to start a new conservative think tank but i think theres anyone in town called the market enterprise, why dont i just give them my money and they arrange this ahead of time, he walks over to his bookshelf in the Old Executive Office and pulls off the shelf and aei study, he blows dust off of it which is put on the study to show its been sitting on my shelf gathering dust for many weeks and he blows it off and says this is what we do with studies they go on the bookshelf and gather dust, you should give money to these guys, so joseph coors cut the check to ed folder he goes to capitol hill and the Heritage Foundation is born, it gets its name because one of the partners is walking through his neighborhood in Fairfax County virginia and suburban washington and he sees a group of Housing Division called the Heritage Homes he said thatll be a nice team so they called it the Heritage Foundation and the rest is history, its a giant multimillion dollar a year conservative think tank, has a reagan agenda and still active today and again, had it sees in this. When conservatives thought they had the book up if you will. Another thing that you see happen over the 1980s in the late 1980s going into the 90s is that the language of politics begins to shift and becomes a much rougher darker kind of lingo, in part Newt Gingrich is a leader coaching his acolyte on the way they should be framing these things. Thats a big change, it is driven by Newt Gingrich, Ronald Reagan had an all shocks quality, he would get angry but it did not really lost and people did not think of Ronald Reagan as a fighter in the personal sense, they thought of him as a guy who famously would go out and have a beer with the democratic speaker of the house after the day was over, thats exaggerated by he was a republican who wanted to get along with everybody and liked by people who thought he was shallow and a warmonger, new gingrich arrived and said conservatives and republicans have been way too content for way too long to be the minority party, we accepted that, we just shuffle along and go along with the democratic majority in congress and its time for that to end, these people have taken advantage, were gonna fight them so he developed a much more future realistic style in this happens in particular when he decides to go after jim wright who is been the democratic speaker of the house and sets up to take him down and does so by accusing him of ethical shortcomings in particular crimes associated with the book that he had written for which he was getting the proceeds that were being arranged by his office, basically political profiteering if you will, he goes out and uses the cspan that we talked about earlier to go after jim wright and the democrats in very harsh terms and basically turns the tenor of the conversation washington 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, Ronald Reagans Vice President has become president and hes also a mainstream in genteel personality, yet the party is slowly being taken over by the Newt Gingrich forces were pushing a much harsher, much more combative view of the world is not inconsistent with the reagan message philosophically but its quite different, i talked with rahm emanuel who is the mayor of chicago and white house chief of staff for barack obama but also a leading member of the house for several years and he worked against Newt Gingrich in many ways going back to the clinton years and he said i think Newt Gingrich in the main figure in the Republican Conservative Movement was really when the reagan era ended not when donald trump are right but when Newt Gingrich became the leading spokesman for the movement that he represented and i think theres something to this, Newt Gingrich represented such a departure from Ronald Reagan in tone and style if not in substance that that was the end of the reagan period. As we get into the early 90s we begin to see a few figures who do depart from what William F Buckley and Ronald Reagan would recognize as conservative philosophy, you see for the first time the few strains of populism showing up in the party, can you talk about that and where that came from, i think the important figure in the real coal mine was pat buchanan, pat buchanan was the Nixon White House aid, he was of Ronald Reagan loyalist, he loved Ronald Reagan whose email address was a variation, he was the ultimate reagan soldier but by the early 1990s he decides that the conservative message has missed a beat, its not looking out enough for workingclass americans and those of the people that have begun moving into the Republican Party for cultural reasons, there against abortion rights, they dont like liberals, they are moving in to the Republican Party, we have a freetrade message that were closing down factories and you can move to mexico and immigrants are moving in and theyre taking the jobs and their wages and we have to stop the two and pat is quite a bit about this, he says i begin to conservatism which would be and it was very much early donald trump, antifreetrade, the north american antifree trade, very much antitrade, antiimport from abroad, proamerican, lets promote american industry, lets have an industrial policy, these are heresies to traditional conservatives, pat buchanan begins pushing them and he pushes him hard when he runs for president and 92 and a 96 in at that point hes like a minority figure hes dismissed as a cultural warrior because hes also very much pushing the agenda of the religious right and at the same time i think a lot of people have dismissed them as a cultural why youre pushing a rightwing cultural social agenda important to pop buchanan with the economic message that he was pushing and from that point i think the 92 campaign now really serious run for president really hurt george w. Bush but you could draw a Straight Line from that campaign in 1982 to donald trump in 2016 and he does pulling at the wall street journal for nbc News Partners donald trump is pat buchanan with his own airplane, that is how similar the message are, that to me is the first sign that there is not only a movement within the Republican Party that is truly more populous and nationalist but also the potential for a spokesman to crystal like that, pat buchanan was a little ahead of his time. Thats around the same time we also see the emergence of the celebrity billionaire washington outsider as well, talk a little bit about ross perot and where does he come in with all of this. Ross perot, he really was donald trump before donald trump, he is a billionaire businessman, check that box, he is very much alone or an independent person has no political connections at all, check that box, hes a little paranoid and conspiracy minded, check that box off but he has a very unlikely way to connect in the for an ocular of the working people, youve a billionaire who talks to the workingclass people and appreciated and not resented for his wealth but admired, thats donald trump to and he brings the same message, he basically starts ross perot by saying the federal spending is out of control, too much red ink, this is going to kill us, is a traditional conservative balance in the message, pretty soon he moved on to a real nationalist trade, he becomes a person who picks up pat Buchanan Team and talks about nafta as creating a giant sucking sound moving all of our jobs out of the u. S. To the south and he picks up a real following, you and i both probably wrote about the army in 1992 and some extent in 1996. And he was pushing back against what was a bipartisan establishment belief in the virtues of free trade, he ran as an independent and finally a third party figure, got in a fairly 90 of the vote in 1992 probably stops george w. Bush from getting a second term, really sends a shiver down the spying of the business constituency of the Republican Party in traditional conservatives, but then ultimately a collapse because of his own personal flaws, he is paranoid, he cant keep his advisors around, he is a little scary to people but he has a message that again like buchanan that common and interestingly the perils to trump her up and down the line, one of them he figured out the way to find a soapbox for his views was to go on cable tv constantly and talk about it, that is donald trump into decades later, three decades later, its the same playbook in many ways, the country was not ready for ross perot in 2016 and it turned out it was kind of ready for donald trump. Ross perot sorted was mesmerizing on tv and kind of the same way, it was part politics, part performance art. The other thing that was similar, i did a fair amount of recording in 1992 1996. And ultimately ross perot created the party and these are people i got to know 1996 and they became regular foot soldiers in the army up in pennsylvania, these were people who felt their part of pennsylvania had been really hurt by factories closing down and moving overseas particular textile factories and who really believed that ross perot had a point that he was right about the country hurting itself by letting freetrade get in the way of what was good for regular americans but what was interesting when i went back and looked at the stories i did during this period they had the same feeling about ross perot eventually that a lot of Trump Supporters had about donald trump, they sell his flaws, they recognize that he was a egomaniac and a little paranoid and he was sporadic and they wished he would talk nice or not so crude sometimes, all of the things that your Trump Supporters say about donald trump, they say hes the guy who could carry a message, we will put up with his flaws because we believe he is a messenger we need right now, that was an interesting parallel that i realize going back between ross perot then and donald trump now, the people who followed them were starry eyed and mesmerized, they were hardheaded and realistic in many ways about the messenger they had chosen, they saw the flawed messenger but the best one available. In part because of the schism that is opening up within the Republican Party is part because george h. W. Bush also was not a skillful handling the domestic economy as he was on the international stage, he loses to bill clinton in 1992, two years later Newt Gingrich has not gotten anywhere in two years later for the first time in 40 years republicans take over in the house with Newt Gingrich as their leader. The gingrich proposition, the very belief at that point that reagan had proved the potential conservative majority in the country and by all rights republicans should be in control of the house if not the house and the senate and george h. W. Bush failed because he was not conservative enough so we should have the white house, we dont but we are going to make sure that we take back congress and people are very skeptical as you know in 1994 if that was possible. But Newt Gingrich put together contract with america which basically steals ideas out of reagan speeches and puts them together in the list of ten, doesnt mention the word republican in the contract of america at all, this is not a republic, not to be seen as a republican document but a conservative government document for all of america, he lays that out against the backdrop of a very disorganized, disjointed somewhat scandal written early litton white house and he says we can go over as conservatives and heres my proof, i have a contract with you all and this is what were going to do, he tries to take the conservative movement from being Ideological Movement to governing platform and he produces that platform, the contract of america and it works, they win back control of the house, is a shot to the entire system in washington, i could not tell then and i still cant tell now if it was a shock to me entre nous gingrich, nonetheless, happened and it was an earthquake, was one of the biggest things that happen in this town since reagan himself, he was basically taken over as a successor to Ronald Reagan in the conservative movement, he then proceeds to dominate the agenda and he and bill clinton become the two baby boomers who are destined to cook but before they collide and the real reason that Newt Gingrich did not succeed in establishing himself and his leadership for the long run was he kinda got outmaneuvered by somebody who is a smarter better politician than him, bill clinton and bill clinton realizes, Newt Gingrich has a point, the country has moved to the right and i move the Democratic Party to the right and im going to move it more there, he moves to the center and plants of flag in the center in the years between 1994 in 1996 and basically takes over that part of the country of the ideological spectrum by basically moving toward Newt Gingrich not fighting him, that turned out to be very successful. I think people in washington at the time dont remember how this completely reoriented everything at one point bill clinton actually stands up and declares the president is still relevant. And he also declares somewhere along the same stretch the year that the government is over. He basically decides im going to best Newt Gingrich by basically following him to the right and he takes the Democratic Party there with him and it takes a while, Newt Gingrich was the dominant force in town, i tell one of the antidotes in the book that with the wall street journal during this period discovered because a Leadership Survey and the focus groups that an oldfashioned of the wall street journal we have the line drawings of people rather than pictures and if you put the name Newt Gingrich in a headline and put a line drawing embedded in the story, the leadership of that story will give a shot at it, he was that fascinating and mesmerizing, even people who hated Newt Gingrich were fascinated by him and he had that, he had all that power at his disposal and to some extent he was squandered by clinton and by wearing people out and overdoing it essentially. He overreaches by basically two backtoback government shutdowns that the republicans got all the blame for and i think that the polling suggested that the impeachment of bill clinton was also a big overreach by august of 98 the polling suggested that people wanted clint to be censored and get back to government. Exactly overreach is the right word, thats exactly what happened, and away bill clinton let him overreach, bill clinton says basically, you want to shut down the government, youre gonna take the blame for, and does it happens twice in the republicans got the blame for and then im sure bill clinton did not want to be impeached that it wasnt overreach, it was seen by america as basically a stupid fight between two baby boomers over sex, not over public policy. And the reaction to that was harmful because Newt Gingrich is seen as the guy who pushes down the path, so by the end of 1998, there is an election, democrats pick up the seats, contrary to what you expect of the middle of a second term, Newt Gingrich is blamed for this by many in his own party he has his own ethical problems and he is gone at the end of 1998 hes gone, four years after the contract, it is all of our in that sense hes sitting down in his home district in georgia in the white house and is popular, hes going up, he said to somebody quoted in the book, hes quoted as saying, bill clinton broke the law and hes in washington and the white house and im down here, what happened, thats what happened. Newt gingrichs departure, and the Republican Party also start to disappear and george w. Bush is very much an established candidate, hes been the governor of texas and fellow governor get together and anoint him to go forward, he does not speak in those really harsh terms, he talks about compassionate conservatism, for a while doesnt that look like the Republican Party is starting to resemble what was recognizable for decades. Absolutely and more than that an updated version of the reagan version of the Republican Party george w. Bush unlike his father was seen by conservatives as a genuine conservative, he walked the walk, talk the talk better, conservatives believed he was one of them in a way they never thought his father was, he seemed generally antiabortion, he seemed he was seen as a evangelical christian to them. He came from texas, he really was from texas, not really from connecticut. All of those things spoke to who he really was to conservatives and they embraced him and interestingly, i think one of the things i came to appreciate george w. Bush a little bit more in retrospect because he came into office wanting to basically update the conservative message, compassionate conservativism was not just a catchphrase, was more than that, it was an idea that conservatives need to not be an ivory tower with philosophies they got out of the National Review, we need to be connected with people more in the conservatives have lost their way because they lost their connection with people so we have to worry about whats happening to the poor black kid in an Innercity School and we have a conservative answer for the of school choice, we need to update the welfare state but not by being so cruel that will cut the welfare rolls, we have to create opportunity, there was an idea that conservatism with a conservative message have become sterile and disconnected from people so george w. Bush comes into office and is controversial because some conservatives think its too much government power and liberals are skeptical, but he starts in 2001 and hes moving down a path of reforming and updating the conservative message and the 9 11 happened, that pretty much ended the experiment because it becomes secondary to a whole new agenda. What donald trump would refer to as the era as endless war begins. It is interesting because george w. Bush campaign by saying we need to pay less attention to the middle east and not engage in nationbuilding, that was the phrase used at the time, its a mistake a waste of resources we have her own needing to do at home, thats what im going to do. So 9 11 happens in the neoconservatisms within the Republican Party repopulated the National Security position in the Bush Administration and had lost their reason for existence when the soviet union went out of existence and when communism went into history as reagan predicted it would suddenly they have any reason in a new enemy of islamic extremism, islamic terrorist and they basically seize the levers of power in many ways in the Bush Administration and they push towards war in afghanistan, that was a consensus were but more controversially and fatally for george w. Bush to a war in iraq which is not necessary and clearly ill advised and something who knows what george w. Bush would tell you if he was here but probably something he rather wish he did not get into. This brings us to the end of the bush presidency, the second bush presidency into gigantic things happen, one is the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression and all of the disruption that that brings into peoples lives in the second is the election of the democratic president , the first africanamerican one which fans underline racial tension in one was a very vigorous agenda starting with healthcare. How does that really set the stage for donald trump. The first thing that happens, the republicans nominate in 2008 somebody who is a wonderful american and equipped for all kinds of things but not equipped to handle an economic crisis, that is john mccain and in 2008 campaign he doesnt have an answer to what i just happen which is the financial industry meltdown and barack obama and the democrats do because this because the crisis calls for Big Government action and they are ready for that. So barack obama wins and he sets out to do two things, have a giant economic rescue with a huge stimulus package and the other is to reform the Healthcare System, he does one thing because its absolutely necessary and he does another thing because democrats have taken control and they have been wanting to do this for 40 years and they finally have a chance to do is reform the Healthcare System, he sets out to do both at the same time. By the way does not deal with immigration problem because that is more, all of those things are fateful decisions. What it does, it leaves conservatives just stuttering not because billions and billions of federal money is going out the door, the deficit spending, this all sounds familiar. It is benefiting wall street we have an economic crisis and these are all the things that donald trump has been doing right now but democrats are blamed for blowing up the deficit and expanding the size of government and that makes conservative republicans crazy, at the same time they underway what is seen as a giant government take over the Healthcare System which is conservatives, the lucite of the fact that obamacare which became known as basically embraced conservative principles, insurance marketplaces art conservative idea the individual mandate that they have to pull his or her own way to make sure they are covered is a conservative in these are incorporated into obamacare but the whole package is seen as giant government program, for the purposes of the story that im telling the main impact, it just leaves conservatives besides themselves, they cannot believe this is what happened, it is so far away from what they thought that the country was headed towards in the 90s and the Newt Gingrich. , there is certainly a racial overlay to this, they cannot see barack obama as entirely the judgment president , and basically leaves the Congressional Republican leadership out to make sure barack obama is not a twoterm president may nominate the next guy in line, mitt romney traditional republican in so many ways, except he also does a little bit of tickling the immigration issue and somebody thought he was going to win and when he loses the Republican Party commission known as autopsy and they decide we have to become a more forward thinking inclusive party, we gotta be from there to women in donald trump is sitting there and trump tower six days after the election filling out the paperwork to trademark the phrase make America Great again, its very backward looking and looking back at america essentially, what are they seeing that we are not seen. You have to remember in the meantime in 2009 2010 the tea party arrived which is a real populist movement, we are tired of the government bailing out guides on wall Street Investment banks and people who are have huge oversized houses, im not getting anything i lost my job, i lost my house, it is a generally angry populist uprising but republicans try to harness the power of that without adapting to it, they nominate mitt romney who is a wonderful guy with a great person and a great guy with the least populist person you can think of, in 2012, if you say he tickled the antiimmigration sentiment to some extent and he loses and again, republicans are stuttering that, they saw 2012 as a renewable election, barack obama should have been beaten and he wasnt and it makes them crazy, the conservative movement of the Republican Party at that point hit a fork in the road, where do we go from here, the Party Establishment says lets go this direction, lets say we need to be and give hispanics load because the demography is changing and we need to have a more soothing message on immigration and emigration comprehensive reform, that is the path toward changing our message to adopt, donald trump arrives with a few others and says exact opposite, that is wrong we should become not more inclusive, friendly to immigration, we should go back to a more basic almost 1950 style message to say we will make America Great again, we have to stop immigration, illegal immigration reduced immigration, we need to stop trade agreements and we should become and recognize the tea party showed us that there is a populist mood in the country and were going to take advantage of it. The party hits that fork in the road between 2012 and 2015 and donald trump is all alone and everybody else is going there and we saw what happened. Here we are, were less than two months away from an election, were in the home stretch, donald trump is in the white house, not for one minute of his presidency has he been above 50 approval in the gallup poll, where are we going, you write volumes. What is it that we should be paying attention too, what is going to be tested about trumps him in the selection. I think its hard to know for sure what the future of trump summons until you know what the outcome of the election which is a copout but an obvious answer, if theres for more years of Donald Trumps consolidation, trumpets and nationalism and populism is a republican message and a lot of people in traditional conservatives would have to decide where they go, i think the key question right now is whether democrats can have a message that basically is reassuring enough to counter that, the odd thing about i dont know if this is specific to donald trump or generically true about where we are right now but people who do not like him are prepared to vote for him anyway, you and i both grew up in eire which we tell people they vote for somebody they like, they want to like who theyre voting for because he will be in the living room for tv every night, that has presented not to be true donald trump people say hes only got 42 43 personal Approval Rating he cant win, he can because people who do not like him dislike the way he operates will still vote for him because they like his attitude and can democrats counter that, that is the real question, it is hard to analyze because its not about ideology, the future of the conservative movement that i write so much about the book in the Republican Party depends on the outcome of this question but its not an ideological question, what i find really interesting and i write about this in the book in acer for the wall street journal, whatever trump leaves the scene whether its 2020 or 2024 there is a whole new generation of young conservative thinkers who are trying to figure out how to come up with a new message, how to combine the unmistakable populist nationalist urges of the country that trump has seized and capitalized on with some were conditional conservatives waves of thinking and basically protecting American Institution in the train to come up with things for example, what support and industrial policy, lets get off the libertarian message that says government cant get involved in the private sector and say we want to save Manufacturing Industries and we want to say plants in this country, we will go out and help them, that will do in a conservative way that will tax credits that were gonna acknowledge the government power and take it away from her traditional straightlaced conservatives, that is where we think things will probably head in the post trump era but if theyre not yet in the post trump era, it will only be one person that matters in the trump era and thats Donald J Trump. Are we struck, trump was an unconventional candidate that there was a mindset as he took office, that may have been the way he campaign but once he gets into the enormous office and all the responsibilities that hes going to have on his shoulder he is going to have to govern like a much more conventional president , cliche, will have to grow into the office, he is very much the same person running in 2016, does that surprise you. Very much so, i like many others i been wrong about many things about trumps him, that was one of them, you assumed, i assumed he would adjust and he has not hes become more trump like overtime and i wrote for the journal not long ago, you cannot put trumpets on back in the body, it does not mean itll be exactly this way forever but he has changed the Republican Party in ways that will be lasting any change the way people operate as president it does not mean every succeeding president will be on twitter 45 or 50 times a day but there is a way of communicating with the public, there is a style of communicating, a tone that he is created that is not going to go away overnight, love them or hate them, he has turn were bent the presidency to his style more than the other way around, i did not see that coming and im still surprised regularly by how much he does that and how much people except that, i thought people would think you can have a president who says the way the things he says him, and who diminishes the currency of a president ial statement to the point he has which is to say he says things for fact that because of literary true, i said that would be so jarring to people that they were not accepted, a lot of people dont accept it and a lot of people do, thats not going to go away overnight, i think theres only one Donald J Trump but he is change the institution in ways i would not have anticipated. What about the norms that we expected of our president s, will president s in the future release their tax returns were shut down the private businesses, he is change those things that we all assumed. I think there is a relief of donald trump of the Republican Party and for the most part in the Democratic Party there is a desire to return to some of those norms and strengthen institutions, again its not going to go away, trump has changed these patterns of political life in America Forever but i think people in both parties quietly worry about institutions, what about the separation of powers and limited executive power, what about the fbi, the National Security council, what about the independence of independent agencies like the fda and the cdc, i think some of that will be restored because i think people in both parties are uncomfortable with the shattering of some of the norms, but not all of them, i think you will probably have institutions like the state department who will feel more beholden to the president and less independent for a while after this because that is what donald trump has done and thats what a lot of people say that they want and will see how it lost, i do think underlying all of this there is a level of concern about the stability and future of basic institution to an extent that i think some of that will turn back in the other direction. It is hard to believe that we are out of time, this is been such a fascinating conversation and you have written such a fascinating book. Congratulations. Thank you and its been interesting. To live through and the chronicle, i was glad to have the chance, thank you for the conversation. This program is available as a podcast al all after words programs can be viewed on a website at booktv. Org. You are watching book tv on cspan2 every week in with the latest nonfiction books and authors. Cspan2, created by americas Television Company as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Tonight on book tv and primetime legal commentator nancy grace weighs in on how citizens can protect themselves, Philip Gordon former white house coordinator for the middle east under president obama talked about failed u. S. Efforts averaging change in the middle east, the Washington Post poets prize winning book critic offers his thoughts on the volume of books written about president trump. Judge jeffrey sutton, former law clerk to anthony schooley, the late Supreme Court justices writings. In new yorker staff writer with the life and political career of joe biden. That all begins at 7 00 p. M. Eastern time, find more information on your Program Guide or at booktv. Org. Erie