I focus mainly on the prism. You call this a book also about the intellectual history of the trump era, a title some might consider to be a timely oxymoron but what do you mean by an intellectual history . Theres a lot of ways to imagine. Theres been a common exercise during the trump years of trying to find that one book from 1973 that anticipated everything or this one essay that saw it coming and ive done that myself but that isnt the kind of book i wanted to write. I wanted to grapple with the insiders and academics and journalists and how they were thinking about this moment in real time so maybe a better way to explain it is to think of it as a snapshot of an intellectual moment future historians can look at to get the sense of how we thought about trump in a moment. Its interesting you talk about books that oversimplify things, this is how we got here, this is how its happened. There was an increased interest in sales and in particular, novels with brave new world and postapocalyptic novels became bestsellers again then you had a book that sort of says this is what this means. Now are we moving into the third phase of this is whats going to happen next and these are the implications . I hope so. I hope we will be getting that new wave of books. The quantity of the books that ive read and thought about it ais asort of testament to this n theres this session with trying to understand how we got here and why donald trump was elected because i do hope that we might try to move beyond a singular obsession and do a little better at grappling with the forces that brought trump into american life. Theres been enough psychoanalyzing in book form. I didnt want to do more of that and in fact the original discussion was included and started with what were they thinking what that i wanted toe more encompassing and didnt want the responsibility of it ie thoughts and the writings. What did you make of that early interest. Thoroughly both people sort of turn to big to explain what was going on. Present mostly fiction, novels and memoirs. I went back and read, it cannot happen here and the run against america and fraud about those in the times. Carlos i certainly engage in that sort of soulsearching through the fiction. But i thank you so spoke to house any people thought that this just seemed impossible. If it is about what were we thinking. We were not thinking that hard but there was a sense in which trump cannot be elected. Even trumps own campaign didnt necessarily think it would happen. So think that we through on fiction early on because it fit in with that sense of an reality, a kind of like this sense of theres weird time this placement vibe that the trump years has given us where people talk about how the weeks feel like months and months feel like years and all of that i thank you so part of that sense that this is not normal. That this is not something the really could be happening. So think the fiction was a natural outlet for that even though we sort of quickly moved beyond it. It. Pamela speaking of quickly and abnormal tempos. The usual pattern with the books about a certain particular administration is that people leave office, and maybe five or ten years later someone in return present memoir. It and now in this Administration People writing memoirs just two minutes until is out the door. What you make of that. And to what extent did you devote yourself to reading those kinds of cookie tello memoirs from people who are in the trump circle then left. Carlos remember how insane that it seemed when george wrote is member on the clinton years called clinton was still in office. It was a huge controversy about how how dare he do that. He was sort of an exiled from the clinton world for a long time. It is just now absolutely like, the moment you were fired or resigned, you go straight to the winter. I did try to read a lot of those books. I did not read all of them. Just as soon as they were out, i sort of came to others later on. Theres a certain urgency and immediacy with them that i think that is great and helpful. They sort of give you an instant sense of what it was like inside read but i think that also it makes them a little what is the word. It makes them feel like theyre not going to last very long and though be superseded by just the next immediate insider tello memoir of the trump administration. It also with all of these books, they just make you, while they present themselves in th best possible light, everyone would like to tell the stories. Although stories cannot be consistent and exactly true. Pamela i would safe, did you get this experience like okay, we are switching angles. And sing this particular meeting from this persons point of view. Sue and there was a lot of that and even one in one particular meeting of trump early in meeting at the pentagon with a bunch of senior officials that were basically making an intervention did get them get him to see the world their way. Multiple books including insider memoirs but also journalistic accounts of nearly trump. , they did the same thing. They just all obsessed with one moment or one conversation. Any for them all together, and you basically get a running transcript of the meeting. It sort of feels. Pamela individually these book shows up the way forward collectively, they show a power it stuck. What did you mean by that. Carlos what i meant was that i think a lot of books of the trump era, i think they reflect the very same blind spots. In sort of stay with the imagination that gave us trump and tropism in the first place. So people bring to all of these stories and all of these accounts, their own blinders and so all of the political Scientists Say the philosophers say its the truth prayed and internationals say other things. And historians just say, we have been here before. We always seen this. You also see people finding validation the longheld beliefs and theories about the world. And trump. And that is everyone from naomi klein, says look, hes just proving everything that ive been saying all along to your calling to the times who wrote a very entertaining book called audience of one recess, trump is the ultimate television character. And proof of all of the things that since writing about tv culture for decades. You can it doesnt mean theyre all wrong. It just means that theres easy tendency to retrieve things from familiar artifact when it comes to evaluating this. And also frankly to just speak to the converted, to speak to whatever silo you are in. A lot of the books and came out of what i sort of generally resistance writing. They fall into that category. They are entirely in working. They look and trump an ac a broken moral compass and therefore assume theres always point start. So found that a little worrisome. Pamela youre coming to this book probably with your own lens, your recent immigrant and not a recent immigrant been newly. In your background is largely in foreign policy. Did you find yourself looking through things with your own lens. Sue and im sure that i did. I leave it to the critics and reviewers who are reading the book to identify violences. I think that certainly came to the United States as a child of an only recently human american citizen. 2016 was a first lunch i was able to vote in. I think that is certainly has to have an impact on how i see this. And how is certainly how i read books about the immigration debates at this time. But i also think that becoming a citizen, emigrating, and becoming a citizens act of faith i think in whatever is the place that you are going to. There is this notion that you have confidence in the experiment that is suddenly you are part of. And i think underlying, maybe in my writing of this book is a sense of faith in the american experiment. Think that despite all of the mayhem in fighting all of the controversy, that take you someplace. But i also think that is just one identity. I think all of us carry multiple identities to come to the four different moments. My fake on in america but also in reading was significant and right writing of this book. They come together when you think about how this is a country that is always divided self in writing. From common sense on. All of the big battles are litigated on paper. Not only on paper but on paper. Pamela what can books do in trying to get a sense of this current moment that say journalism or the internet. What is it do better. Carlos i think in this will be unfair to journalism and to the internet did. Pamela thats okay. Carlos i think there is possibly a little bit of staying power in the or they can be in the act of committing words to book form. Even our colleagues at the Washington Post and New York Times for example who are very talented journalists who have covered this presidency in great detail through this daily ongoing journalism. Any of them have felt the need to try to take a step back. And go deeper in book form. And im glad theyre doing that. Read a lot of those folks. And so i feel that if journalism is supposed to be the first draft of history that the books are the first draft of how we think more deeply about the history now we see ourselves in the history. How we decide that history means. We will be rewriting this forever. I can only imagine that the bus to on the trump era have yet to be written. Pamela on the commentary on this book. Suet they were terrific books. But theres going to be a lot more to think through. And a lot more to understand. And images new information to obtain as documents are declassified and investigations come forward. I think were going to keep learning a lot more. Theres a ton of memoirs. Weve been talking about how any are coming up from top officials. There will be a lot more. And on some of the key debate. I want to read kristin nielsens of her time at Homeland Security rated and those are essential narratives that have yet to be fully told. Given wonderful books about the trump era so far. And think were going to be with them for a long time to come. Pamela another you are not writing about the man, donald trump himself. Nonetheless, is unavoidable figure in all of this. And one of the things that i think that these writers have been saying one way or another is he is a very difficult figure to try to pin down. What is going on inside of him. In the same way that i think biographers and famously, had trouble writing about ronald ragan. They just couldnt get a sense. Did you have the trouble. Carlos no, i had a slightly different perspective on that. This whole project for me began even before the book. Shes deciding this is my feet that i would start read all of these books. The started in the summer 2015 when trump was per se a candidate for this nomination. And he is doing very well so i went back and ive read a bunch of his books. Even ghostwritten books reveal a lot about how somebody wishes to be perceived. So i read eight trump books including the foundational some of the art of the deal. And several others. And it is all there. Like everything we have seen about donald trump is there. This kind of petty grievances and obsession with his wealth and and insecurities and his mistrust of the press. And constant west for the approval and willingness to align an ac. It was all in his own books. So trump can be shocking but if you just spent time with his own words. Could not have been all that surprising. Pamela is there anything that you thought, people dont realize this about him. Anything surprising. Carlos one thing that i caught on to early on in the start seeing it through a lot of his books is that and maybe this is surprising now. Nearly four years in red he liked acquiring things. He liked women. A liked getting the ignore writing and attention that came with some big deal. And then to managing the thing and running it. The outboard really quick. I remember early on i just got like, i can imagine him wanting to win the presidency bring can imagine him enjoying being the president. Because it is a lot of work. It doesnt seem to be his ammo. In the books, he just kind of flights to go to the next thing. And you see this in his personal life and it is this all sorts of ways. So i remember thinking this the guy who really was when. These monies everything. The world, your winter or a loser. But i couldnt you really enjoying the presidency. And which is why we have seen the bars that he has been brought to the most. Its been sort of the theatric of the presidency. Ellipsis on except because that is what president s do. He feeds off that adulation. But he hasnt been a dealmaker in office. He has not been able to do all those things on the date today grove a job of presenting. Such as even getting the intelligence briefing. So that was something that struck me when i wrote about him first back in 2015. But ive seen and validated throughout the past four years. Pamela another question. What you are talking about its easy to think about the present to the trump era. Inserted the president that you would help too. Obviously with your political leaning. But how did you define era. Because a lot of people when Donald Trump Took Office and went back in the red earlier biographies of what they would be considered authoritarian regimes prayed in the way and looked at world war ii figures. How would you sort of define when these books start in terms of looking at the trump era. Carlos there was a big challenge for me early on. I felt there was the risk of being too narrow and i defined. But then i felt that opening up too much or it there would always be Something Else that i would have to rated and to incorporate. So i decided to be ruthless against my unfocused sort of narrowly. Im going to look at the books that came out between 2016 and 2020. And even that is unfair because the books he came out in 2016 or not written in any way to make sense of donald trump. A book like an of the wood became a trouble. It was not a trump book to begin with. And so i decided to know before you and the critics to determine if it was wise or not. He seems very focused on this particular. Because i knew that opening the door would bring the devolution of different works i would want to explore. I did it sometimes just for myself. As i was reading and writing. I would read other books on periods or experiences that i thought were relevant. But i decided to keep the focus of the books and and my book on largely books of people were writing to grapple with this think that was in front of us. Pamela lets talk about this for moment. That was first of what i thought became a sub genre of the book the reflected something that happened in journalism after the election which everybody sort of said lesson are reporters after the land. Into these industrial cities. In rural areas and figure out who are the trump voters. That was kind of the one book in the first book the people latched onto. I will be think that book kind of told that story. And are there others that are equally or even better. Carlos i think hillbilly tells a story very well. I think that it was very well written book. It was a very Exciting Book to read. But i think a lot of it was timing and made people seize on it this is the trump explainer book. I thank you so probably unfair to the book itself. Into the trump voters. In the sense that it is a very personal story of growing up between kentucky the mainly in ohio. That his own rather conservative politics, the way he sees that experience. But in such a broad appeal is a sort of quick essential trump voter book because i think that in a very kind of bootstraps thing. Like for you troubles and that is a very loser thing to do. His grandmother tells him that. And so he goes to the marines that shakes him up. But it also had a very so thats more of like in her absence, the kind of conservative feel. In the house the sort of appeal to the left as well because he works his way up and then he went to law school and he while it also kind of affirms some liberal suspicions of the White Working Class. In the social pathologies of this community. Thats what had something for everyone. And that is why i think it became kind of across the spectrum that this book that people divide on. In a book like heartland by sarah marsh is about her experience going up in kansas, the farm country rated by very much from the left. From a totally different political perspective. Pamela the publishers really pitch this. This is that liberal hillbilly coming out. Carlos is unfair to marsh. This was his own book. And it was in the works for a long time before that. They could find often brought their own preconceptions to what they were covering which is sometimes inevitable. Here is another simplification but it strikes me a good portion of the book that you described in your book are those that explicitly set out to say here im going to explain to you whats happening here and then there are those like hillbilly elegy and heartland that dont set out to do that but you found to be in many ways better vehicles to explain this period them the books that were going at it directly. I think thats right. I felt good books have to accept messiness and whenever things are too tied up in a bow i worry about whats been left out of it. What am i not getting. And in some cases they even profile the same people like this is one voter in pennsylvania who was a longtime democratic labor organizer who switched to trump they give him significantly different motivations for supporting donald trump, and in one book he is an economic populace and worries the democrats have begun the working class, hes a cultural warrior but really he is the same guy i suspect. But often hes interpreted through the prism journalists and writers bring to the story. I do not want to sit in judgment of that i just want to point about and show how hard it is to avoid. So you have shown these particular lenses. We havent talked about the most obvious which is ideological and we live in such an incredibly pulverized period. Did you have to try to find books that were not in this resistance i guess how hard was it to find books in the middle . I dont know if it is the middle that we are looking for. You may end up in a different place. What i often did i read a bunch of books over the course of the four years. But when i realized i was going to try to take a bigger look at these books, i went back and sort of backfilled different areas may be i read five books on this but i want to read five more and from there i could pick and choose different perspectives. That was a luxury to have the time to do that. I could never do that as an ongoing book critic, i can only do that as an author where i had a little bit of time and so on these books about the White Working Class i found these books i missed the first time. Its called we are still here. At first i thought it would be similar to the others. She spent time talking to people and i found she pointed out the heartland isnt just the White Working Class as it has been sort of branded and this debate that weve had about the motivations of the heartland of trump voter that has always been narrowed dow