An Award Winning journalist for the Atlantic Mckay Coppins is a veteran journalist and i say veteran because hes been reporting since he was a student at byu. Hes still pretty young, but know no one perhaps is better suited to write about senator romney. They share a faith, a political sensibility and a deep sense of right and wrong. Well hear more about that in a minute. Hes joined in conversation by Doug Fabrizio from College Radio west. I dont think dougs needs any introduction. Hes been a friend to all of us in the valley for many years. We look to him for advice and good humor, especially on nonfiction topics. Finally, before we get started, id like to say that a portion of all of our ticket sales go to fund our not for profit brain food books, working to get books into the hands of those without regular access, especially young people. Since the beginning of last year, weve distributed over 20,000 books across the state and also at the Pediatric Clinic in tuba city, arizona. So thank you very much for that. Bring food books because kids need to read. And now please welcome Mckay Coppins and Doug Fabrizio. Hi, Mckay Coppins. Well, i want to start with a tweet from donald trump because there have been plenty of reviews of the book. You do all this work and Donald Trump Trump doesnt even realize its you that did the writing. Heres his tweet that appeared a few days ago. I love listening to people read this. This is something of mitt romney, a total loser that only a mother could love. Just wrote a book which is much like him. Boring, horrible, and totally predictable. Thats got to move a few books, right . We were thrilled. We put it on the amazon page. I did send that that that tweet to mitt romney and he texted back, ha ha ha. Hes such a whack job. One of the things that i wanted to ask you about it does have something to do with donald trump and the part that hes playing in the moment were in right now. And the sort of the like the incredible, i guess, timing of this book. What do we be talking about . Mitt romney with the same level of attention. If it werent for donald trump in this odd moment, just talk about the the way we were talking a little bit about this earlier. The the strange, i guess, kind of timing for all of this. Yeah. I mean, its its not a given that a book about mitt romney in 2023 would have been like wildly interesting. Right. And i had to kind of sell it to publishers when i first embarked on it. But what makes him interesting to me, at least what drew me to him as a subject was that within a space of ten years, he had gone from president ial nominee of the Republican Party, republican standard bearer to essentially a pariah in his own party, because in a very short period of time, he watched his party radically transform all around him. Right. And he kind of didnt change that much, at least in that period. And so he was sort of left out on his own. And rather than, you know, quickly capitulated to this new brand of right wing populism, like most of his fellow republicans did, he sort of decided he wasnt going to do it. And not being willing to do it made him very isolated, but also very interesting. And for me, as a biographer, to my great fortune, very introspective and kind of soul searching about what had happened and that was sort of the jumping off point for the book. What was the thing is there one characteristic in particular about mitt romney that you wanted to unpack . Like, was there one part of him . Like what was an. Youve been covering mitt romney for some time now. Mm hmm. Before all of this, before he was a pariah in the party, when he was a candid, it was there a consistent through line in terms of a characteristic that you thought you wanted to explore . Well, i think, you know, i have covered him for more than ten years before i approached him about writing this book. And as a president candidate, he was i mean, really not that interesting. You know, i covered his campaign. I tended hundreds of events. He gave the same stumps speech word for word, four times a day, every day for a year. I got to the point where i was like having dreams about it. I could recite every word. He was very cautious, very calculating, very disciplined. Thats what his public persona was. And i remember actually early in that campaign in 2012, talking to another reporter about how it was really difficult to cover mitt romney in an interesting way. And the reporter said, yeah, i dont think he has a lot of interiority. Thats my theory. Like he doesnt have a lot going on beneath the surface. And, you know, i didnt realize that maybe thats true. Who knows . I always sensed that wasnt true. I always had this kind of hunch that there was more going on internally than he let on. But i think what what was so interesting about getting to do this book was that he really became pretty vulnerable with me and opened up. I mean, over the course of two years, i interviewed him 45 times. He gave me his journals. He gave me his email correspondence with top republicans, his text messages. I interviewed his family. I interviewed people who had known him throughout his life. And it became very clear very quickly to me that theres a lot of interiority like mitt romney has, a lot going on. He wrestles with his conscience. He wrestles with the compromises that hes made over the course of his political career. His journals are filled with him being really hard on himself, you know, beating himself up for mistakes hes made or gaffes hes committed. And, you know, pretty early on in the process, i realized that this was a guy who was much more selfaware than most people realized. And i think that selfawareness was the characteristic that i found most interesting. When you presented romney with your pitch and then the conditions you write in the book that its he responded to those terms as if it were a dare. Mm hmm. What was that about . What was. Did he see it as a kind of a challenge that i will take this . Well, its i think its i mean, i did kind of needle him a little bit when i first approached it. And i was hoping to get a little bit of a rise out of him, but i didnt think i would get nearly what i did. So i basically said, i think you have a really interesting story to tell. I think youve seen a lot in politics and especially the last few years as a republican senator in these caucus lunches and, you know, cloakrooms. And i want to write a biography where i have all these stories, but i only want to do it if youre ready to be fully candid and implicit to that was that i wasnt sure he he would be right. And i had i talked to friends of his when i was thinking about doing this, he said hes not going to give you what you need. Like your this isnt going to work out. And so i kind of presented that to him and i think he may have i dont know. But it was almost like he he took offense at the idea that he wouldnt be fully candid or fully forthcoming. Right. And i knew that i had him in that really the first few weeks of interviewing him when i was sitting in church and i got a text message from him and he said, hey, mccain, check your email. I just sent you something that might be interesting to look at before our next our next chat. And i looked at it and its just hundreds of pages of his personal journals that i hadnt even asked for. And i later found out through his wife and he had not reread them before giving them to me. And its funny. What is that about, by the way . Not rereading that because twit and nutjob and all of the quote unquote burns that people have been paying attention to in the book appeared in in those personal. A lot. Yeah, a lot of them, anyway. A lot of the most withering comments he made about his fellow republicans were from those journalists, some of them more than a decade ago. And he didnt, you know, part of the deal that we made was that this wouldnt be an authorized biography in the sense that he had any editorial control. He couldnt take things out. He couldnt, you know, tamper with it. I would let him read it before it was published. And if you wanted to have a conversation about it, i was willing to do that in good faith. But ultimately, i would decide what was in the book. So for him to give me his journals without reviewing them, i think demonstrated a lot of trust, which i certainly appreciate it, but also a certain kind of reckless feeling of liberation. You know, i think that he when i approached him, it was it was shortly after january 6th. And i could tell that something had kind of shaken loose in him from being in that experience, being in the senate and having to be evacuated as a mob was, you know, hunting for him. And fellow republican traitors. And i think that he had entered this new phase of his life and career in public service, where he just didnt care anymore about getting reelected. His own political future, and was thinking more about you know, on one his his own legacy. And he wanted a story that could be put into a book and that his posterity could read. He said, i want this to be something my Great Grandkids could read. I think that, you know, this is something i want them to remember. This moment. But the other thing was he it was kind of a warning, i think, that he after january 6th started to ruminate a lot about the fragility of american democracy and he has this map on the wall of his Senate Office that its called the histo map, and it charts the rise and fall of very the most powerful civilizations throughout Human History. And he had hung it on his wall when he first got to the senate and kind of thought of it as like a curiosity that he would sometimes show people. After january six, he sort of became obsessed with it and he would find himself looking at it late at night at his office and, you know, showing it to people. And the thing he he said to me when he first showed it to me was, if you look at this whole, you know, chart of Human History, there are very few periods where democracies are thriving. Right. Almost without exception. Throughout Human History is the most powerful civilizations in the world have been autocracies of some kind. You know, its kings or emperors, rulers, kaisers, whatever. And he came to believe that we are in a much more perilous moment than a lot of us realize. And i think he saw this book as sort of a warning that he could issue is any of that view of history informed by his faith, his sense of, i dont know, book of mormon characters, biblical prophets, the ideas as theres a latter day saint, the notion that joseph smith would talk about the constitution hanging by a thread. Was he informed by any of that . So i think theres no question that his view of the kind of sacredness of american democracy in the american project is informed by his faith. I mean, i think most most people who grow up mormon are kind of taught that, you know, the founding documents of the United States are divinely inspired and america is a promised land. You know, all that stuff. And so i think that he had a kind of very sincere and sort of sentimental or patriotism that that these days almost kind of seems quaint. But, you know, he was deeply offended on on kind of a visceral level by seeing members of his party try to overturn a president ial election. Like there was something about it. You know, he was mad about the lies, that he was mad that, you know, about this cynicism of his his colleagues. But i think on just like an elemental level, he just couldnt stand seeing so much disrespect for the, you know, american democracy. I mean, one of the first things he told me was that a very large portion of my party doesnt really believe in the constitution. And i remember kind of being taken aback by that because its like our second or third interview and i asked him to kind of expound on that. And thats when he showed me the map, and thats when he he said, you know, that our book that members of my party believe in the parts of the constitution, they like they like the second amendment. They believe in that. But you know, it seems to me that theyre willing, at least now in this desert new era, to pick and choose which parts of the constitution theyre willing to follow. And for him, that its just very alarming. I want to ask about the the sort of the nature of the conversations you were having. As you say, 45 interviews. You describe in the book. Hes more puckish than his public persona. Some nights he vented some nights he dished. Youve also talked about i dont know if this is you dont use this term necessarily in the book, but youve said you think hes kind of judgmental. So what . So i guess what im saying is, in the ebb and flow, did you argue, did he ever yell at you . Did he ever say, dude, im not interested in doing this anymore . What what are your motives . Like, what was the give and take like . Yeah. I mean, first of all, i will say that like, to my pleasant surprise, mitt romney is a pretty good hang, which i dont think people would necessarily know. Right. You know, because i knew right at the beginning, like, oh, this is going to be great material. I wasnt sure what it would be like to hang out with mitt romney for two years. Right. But luckily for me, hes actually like very funny. He has like a finely tuned sense of the absurd in political life. He can he can tell really entertaining stories about his colleagues. And, you know, the indignities of running for office. So all of that was fun. Most of our meetings were very friendly. He you know, it often i got the sense that he just liked the company because he didnt have that many friends in washington. I would like get to the end of my questions and sort of close my notebook or laptop or whatever. And he would be like, so what are you watching these days . Like, have you seen ted lasso right. Like, all right, were still going. Lets. Lets do this. But there were definitely also contentious conversations for sure, because the relationship between biographer and subject is pretty interesting. And kind of weird. Like on the one hand, you want to do everything you can as a writer to understand where theyre coming from, understand their perspective, perspective. And i really did strive to do that. But then once youre writing the book, you have to kind of insert yourself sometimes as a narrator to point out where you think he is. You know, rationalizing or where hes, you know, a little being inconsistent and or he hasnt considered this element or whatever the deal that we had was that he would get to read the book before it was published. And that was i remember i sent him the manuscript of his earlier this spring, and i sent him the manuscript and then just kind of like waited for his reaction. And i thought he might take some time to process it. And then, you know, next time i saw him, we we would we would talk about it. And instead, he was live texting me his reaction while i read it, which made for a very unnerving weekend. Like on page 132, literally like, yeah, it would be like 100 pages in, you know, this is really interesting. This is this parts compelling, but i give him a lot of credit because i think i tried to put myself in his shoes. I think reading a biography written by somebody else about your life where youve given so much access to your innermost thoughts. I would sometimes joke with my wife, actually, she would joke this, that, that if felt like i know mitt romney better than i know her at this point because, you know, shes like, ive never given you major. And also, you dont know what i was thinking. You know . But when you have youve given that level of access to your private thoughts and feelings to a writer, and then you have to read their assessment of your life. Thats got to be really hard. I dont know if i could do it. I dont think if somebody came to me and said, i want all your emails and journals and then im going to turn it into a book, i think i would be a little suspicious. So i think it speaks to his selfawareness and candor and also to his kind of confidence in himself that he was willing to do that. But it was i think it was hard. You know, i write in the book at the end that there were some things he just disagreed with. He doesnt you know, he disagrees with my characterization and he doesnt think that i quite capture that. But overall. Well, i think i mean, youd have to ask him, but i think that he has he feels good about where it ended up. I think for the most part, he feels like i hope that he feels that ive done his story justice. You mentioned in the book that one thing he said to you was he figured that you would get the mormon thing as a as a fellow latter day saint. What difference did that make you being a latter day saint . Him being a latter day saint . Like, did did it come up very much . Did did he think that you would understand him be more sympathetic to him . Like, did you get a sense of that . I wondered what he meant when he said that in our first interview. And i kind of didnt explore it. I was just like, well, well see. You know, early on, one thing became very clear, which is that it helped that we could use a mormon shorthand with each other. Right. Like while he was telling me the stories of his service as a bishop in the belmont ward or his mission or whatever, he didnt have to pause to explain, you know, what all this was. He knew that i understood it. And thats certainly what a steakhouse writes. And in my context, yes, exactly. So that helped. But i also found over time that, you know, one way that i was able to understand him was not just that we were both mormon, but that we had both grown up mormon in places where there werent many mormons and, you know, he grew up in michigan. I grew up in massachusetts. And he said to me once, you know, the thing about growing up mormon outside of utah is that you get used to being different in ways that are important to you. And, you know, especially these last seven or eight years of his career, thats kind of been the defining theme of his of his work. Right. Hes become increasingly isolated and increasingly disliked among his republican colleagues. But its for reasons that he feels are important. And so hes sort of made peace with it. Hes drawn on his experience in, you know, being at 100, you know, parties in high school where hes the only one not drinking or whatever. That that kind of, i think, helped inform him. And i was i think i understood that about him because we had that same experience. Do you think that. It seems like in his early experience as hes trying to decide what sort of ideal he wants for himself politically, like he seems somewhat ambivalent about being a republican early on, as certainly his father, as you say in the book, planted himself in the squarely in the liberal wing of the Republican Party. Do you think thats where he wanted to be and talk about the fact that he didnt really ever fancy himself