Speaker 1: Welcome to off the cop with me, se cop. Some
Speaker 1: of you may, I'm realizing they only know me as
Speaker 1: a never Trumper, a former Republican turned independent, and that's great.
Speaker 1: I'm happy to fit in that box for you. But
Speaker 1: it's not a role I ever endeavored to play. It's
Speaker 1: not the role I imagined I would I would play.
Speaker 1: And I want to talk to you about that evolution
Speaker 1: a little bit because I think it's important and I
Speaker 1: know I'm not the only one who made it, so
Speaker 1: maybe it'll help you understand me a little bit better,
Speaker 1: but also give you some context as to why I
Speaker 1: work so hard every day to expose just how awful
Speaker 1: and existentially alarming I think Trump and Republicans are and
Speaker 1: where that's coming from. I think that's important because for me,
Speaker 1: this whole thing that I'm doing, this isn't a grift,
Speaker 1: this isn't a hustle. I've turned down jobs and more
Speaker 1: money than I've ever made in order to stay true
Speaker 1: to what I believe, and leaving my party actually cost
Speaker 1: me a lot. It costs me dollars and jobs and opportunities.
Speaker 1: It's put my life at risk, but importantly, it also
Speaker 1: cost me friends and colleagues and relationships. Certainly not with
Speaker 1: everyone I once communed with, but with plenty of people
Speaker 1: who you know, suddenly started doing and saying things that
Speaker 1: I just couldn't jibe with at all, and vice versa
Speaker 1: for them and me. I'm sure, because when you know
Speaker 1: someone through politics and then you no longer value the
Speaker 1: same things, and the things you do value become radically different,
Speaker 1: and you start using your platforms to do radically different projects,
Speaker 1: and you believe that one of those projects is actually
Speaker 1: hurting people. Well, yeah, it's hard to be friends. It's
Speaker 1: really hard to be friends. But all of that's okay.
Speaker 1: I'm good where I'm at. I'm here because I care
Speaker 1: about the country. It's just never where I expected to be.
Speaker 1: A party apostate and someone who now calling balls and
Speaker 1: strikes and no longer on a team, and a person
Speaker 1: whose values just don't seem to be like represented anywhere
Speaker 1: today in politics. Just politically homeless. And maybe you feel
Speaker 1: that way too, because I know more and more people
Speaker 1: are because the two parties have become both so extreme,
Speaker 1: but also they've become really bad at solving our problems
Speaker 1: and listening to us and doing the things they were
Speaker 1: meant to do, but it didn't always feel this way.
Speaker 1: I became a conservative somewhere early on in college. I
Speaker 1: went to a debate freshman year for something to do
Speaker 1: in between, you know, smoking clothes cigarettes and drinking coffee
Speaker 1: and reading Nietzsche and trying to feel smart. I decided,
Speaker 1: let me go to a debate. That'll that's that's something
Speaker 1: affected college students do, right. So I went to a debate,
Speaker 1: and to my chagrin, found myself agreeing with the conservative
Speaker 1: debater more than the liberal debater. And I was shocked
Speaker 1: and appalled and ashamed because I grew up in Boston,
Speaker 1: where Democrats were good people and Republicans were bad people.
Speaker 1: That's what I saw on every movie, That's what I
Speaker 1: saw on every TV show, you know, in the eighties.
Speaker 1: So when I discovered that I really actually gravitated to
Speaker 1: the right on like a bunch of issues, mainly fiscal
Speaker 1: and defense, I was like embarrassed. And I made the
Speaker 1: very uncomfortable call home to say, Mom, Dad, I have
Speaker 1: to tell you something. I think I'm a Republican. They said,
Speaker 1: so are we, and it was like we had just met.
Speaker 1: I didn't know this about them. We didn't talk about politics.
Speaker 1: Growing up. We weren't radical, We didn't hate Democrats. All
Speaker 1: I knew were Democrats. So it was this revelation that
Speaker 1: I came to very honestly and not at all sort
Speaker 1: of indoctrinated. I was just really inspired by the idea
Speaker 1: of limited government. Who, after all, is inspired by government.
Speaker 1: I never understood that's what's inspiring about government. Who wants
Speaker 1: more government in their lives?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: I believe government's good for things. Government is necessary for things,
Speaker 1: but it's not what I aspire to more government. I
Speaker 1: was also inspired by the idea of rugged individualism. I
Speaker 1: was really drawn to economic conservatism. Starve the beast, lower taxes,
Speaker 1: lowering the debt and the deficit, fiscal responsibility. This was
Speaker 1: sexy to me at eighteen, guys, that's how big of
Speaker 1: a nerd I was. But this was sexy. You know
Speaker 1: what wasn't sexy all the college kids protesting, you know,
Speaker 1: the normal liberal stuff. What I wanted to do a
Speaker 1: March for fiscal responsibility. How about March for austerity? No
Speaker 1: one was doing that, So that was the genesis. Then
Speaker 1: I moved to New York City in nine to eleven,
Speaker 1: happens the very next year, and I had always been
Speaker 1: very patriotic, but that made me certainly more hawkish, to
Speaker 1: be honest. But also I really disliked identity politics. That
Speaker 1: was a thing that the left had really beigun leaning
Speaker 1: into and kind of decided it was the main event
Speaker 1: over a few decades. And I just thought that was
Speaker 1: super deleterious, divisive, counterproductive, and I thought it would read
Speaker 1: a lot of resentment and division, and guess what it did.
Speaker 1: So I rejected that and I found empowerment in conservatism
Speaker 1: and at the time the Republican Party. I loved our
Speaker 1: conservative intellectuals like George will and Croudhammer and Joanah Goldberg,
Speaker 1: all of whom I luckily got to know and work
Speaker 1: with eventually in some capacity. These were smart people. These
Speaker 1: were normal people, maybe nerdier than your normal folk, but
Speaker 1: like smart, normal rational These weren't mouth breathing wackos and
Speaker 1: conspiracy theorists. They made a lot of sense and politically
Speaker 1: I was inspired by people like John McCain and Paul Ryan.
Speaker 1: These were also just good men, principled men. The thing
Speaker 1: I think I liked the most though, and this is
Speaker 1: the point, was the Conservatism was a movement of ideas
Speaker 1: and that was a relatively new thing. Conservatism had spends
Speaker 1: from decades in the wilderness in the earlier part of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, and then the conservative movement got some
Speaker 1: life breathed into it when Barry Goldwater came along with
Speaker 1: Conscience of a Conservative. Liberalism had reigned supreme for decades,
Speaker 1: but it had kind of stopped working as well as
Speaker 1: it had promised to. Intellectually, liberalism was king, but practically
Speaker 1: it had kind of stopped doing the thing it was
Speaker 1: meant to do. And America was ripe for new ideas,
Speaker 1: and conservatives decided to bring those new ideas, and a
Speaker 1: lot of voters liked those new ideas, believe it or not.
Speaker 1: Here's a clip of Ronald Reagan describing this time time
Speaker 1: at a Seapac speech in nineteen eighty five. Now the
Speaker 1: clip is a little over two minutes, but don't where
Speaker 1: I'm coming back to.
Speaker 2: Listen, This great turn from left to right was not
Speaker 2: just a case of the pendulum swinging. First the left
Speaker 2: holes sway, and then the right, and here comes the
Speaker 2: left again. The truth is conservative thought is no longer
Speaker 2: over here on the right. It's the mainstream now, and
Speaker 2: the tide of history is moving irresistibly in our direction.
Speaker 2: Why because the other side is virtually bankrupt of ideas
Speaker 2: it has it has nothing more to say, nothing to
Speaker 2: add to the debate. It has spent its intellectual capital
Speaker 2: such as it was, and it has done its deeds. Now.
Speaker 2: We're not in power now because they failed to gain
Speaker 2: electoral support over the past fifty years. They did win support,
Speaker 2: and the result was chaos, weakness, and drift. Ultimately, though
Speaker 2: their failures yielded one great thing. Us guys, we in
Speaker 2: this room, are not simply profiting them from their bankruptcy.
Speaker 2: We are where we are because we're winning the contest
Speaker 2: of ideas. In fact, in the past decade, all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, quietly, mysteriously, the Republican Party has become the
Speaker 2: party of ideas. We became the party of the most
Speaker 2: brilliant and dynamic young minds. I remember them just a
Speaker 2: few years ago, running around scrawling laugher curves on table napkins,
Speaker 2: going to symposia and talking about how social programs did
Speaker 2: not eradicate poverty but entrenched it. Writing studies on why
Speaker 2: the latest weird, unnatural idea from the social engineers is
Speaker 2: weird and unnatural.
Speaker 3: You were there.
Speaker 2: They were your ideas, your symposia, your books, and usually
Speaker 2: somebody else's table napkins. As all of a sudden, Republicans
Speaker 2: were not defenders of the status quo, but creators of
Speaker 2: the future.
Speaker 1: So, look, you can disagree with Reagan's diagnosis of the left,
Speaker 1: but this was inarguably a time when the Republican Party
Speaker 1: believed in things the right believed in policies and principles,
Speaker 1: I mean dogmatically rigidly to a point. Conservatives genuinely believed
Speaker 1: in democracy in America, and not the s new version
Speaker 1: that requires its citizens to hate each other to perform patriotism.
Speaker 1: And they really believed in a contest of ideas. And
Speaker 1: this concept of competing for the soul of the nation
Speaker 1: with intellectually rigorous ideas and admittedly populist rhetoric became foundational
Speaker 1: to American politics, and in particular movement conservatism later on
Speaker 1: in that century. It was foundational in the kind of
Speaker 1: conservative thought that I came up in. And so in
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, when we lost the presidency again got trounced
Speaker 1: in Congress, we had to do an autopsy. Why we
Speaker 1: needed new ideas. The party knew it. We didn't have
Speaker 1: to slice open democratic institutions and cut them down and destroy.
Speaker 1: We just needed new ideas. So I worked on that
Speaker 1: autopsy to find new ideas that would matter to new
Speaker 1: kinds of voters, women, minorities, millennials, LGBTQ. That's what I did.
Speaker 1: I found the ideas that would appeal to these voting
Speaker 1: blocks that we were missing. Those ideas were on regulation,
Speaker 1: the tax code, entrepreneurialism, all kinds of things. But in
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, as you know, everything changed. Donald Trump came along.
Speaker 1: He didn't care about ideas, he didn't care about policies
Speaker 1: or principles. He didn't really even care about the GOP
Speaker 1: or what it was meant to stand for. All he
Speaker 1: saw was power and dollar signs. And I blame him
Speaker 1: a little less at the time than I blame the
Speaker 1: party leaders who should have stood up to him more. Instead,
Speaker 1: the GOP rolled out the red carpet, abandoned everything it
Speaker 1: once cared about, said that those foundational things like lowering
Speaker 1: the debt and deficit, anti protectionism, family values, etc. They
Speaker 1: just didn't matter anymore because they didn't matter to Trump.
Speaker 1: So conservative ideas just didn't have any utility anymore. He
Speaker 1: wasn't interested in persuading. He was interested in dictating. He
Speaker 1: wasn't interested in selling the country on a vision. He
Speaker 1: was interested in conning the country. He wasn't interested in
Speaker 1: competing for your vote. He was interested in competing for
Speaker 1: your attention. And look, he was hugely successful at this,
Speaker 1: as we know, but it came at a significant cost,
Speaker 1: obviously to the country, but also to the whole premise
Speaker 1: that politics is a marketplace of ideas, competing for your vote.
Speaker 1: Now it's the second term, and it couldn't be more
Speaker 1: clear that he doesn't care how the Republican Party does
Speaker 1: in the midterms. The economies in the toilet thanks to
Speaker 1: his dumb tariffs and his dumb war, and he's telling
Speaker 1: Americans he doesn't think about their finances, and can he
Speaker 1: have a billion dollars for a ballroom and another two
Speaker 1: billion for a slush fund for his friends. He doesn't
Speaker 1: give a shit that none of this is good for
Speaker 1: his own party or keeping the majority. He doesn't give
Speaker 1: a shit. Now, Republicans, Republicans know this Republican leadership. Mike
Speaker 1: Johnson in the House, John Thune in the Senate, they
Speaker 1: know he doesn't care. They know that They stopped selling
Speaker 1: ideas ten years ago when he first got elected throughout
Speaker 1: of ideas. Ideas don't work because Trump will contradict them.
Speaker 1: So what are they left with. The news is bad,
Speaker 1: the polls are bad, the president doesn't care, and they
Speaker 1: can't go out and sell ideas, So what can they do.
Speaker 1: All they can do now is rig it. All they
Speaker 1: can do is redraw the maps. All they can do
Speaker 1: is make it harder for black voters to vote, and
Speaker 1: Hispanic voters to vote, marginalized communities to vote, and they
Speaker 1: can try to bribe voters. That's what this Trumps slush
Speaker 1: fund is. It's an attempt to buy off MAGA voters
Speaker 1: who are disappointed that his economy sucks and that he
Speaker 1: didn't release the Epstein files and that he got us
Speaker 1: in a war with Iran after promising not to. It's
Speaker 1: a bribe, and what else do they have. They can
Speaker 1: try to silence the media and the critics. That's what
Speaker 1: all of Trump's lawsuits against the press are. That's why
Speaker 1: he's trying to orchestrate these Trump friendly mergers. That's why
Speaker 1: he's trying to get reporters fired from news outlets like
Speaker 1: Fox and CNN and CBS because he can't sell his
Speaker 1: bullshit if a free and fair press is constantly calling
Speaker 1: him out for lying and grifting and corruption. He needs
Speaker 1: a friendly press. He needs propaganda. So all of these
Speaker 1: are signs that the right has waived the white flag
Speaker 1: of surrender in the contest of ideas. Forget whether the
Speaker 1: ideas are good or bad. They're not even bringing them
Speaker 1: to the table. They're not competing for your vote at all. Instead,
Speaker 1: they're trying to draw you out of maps. They're trying
Speaker 1: to buy your vote. They're trying to silence you. That's
Speaker 1: all they've got. Trump, the consummate salesman, isn't even bothering
Speaker 1: to sell voters on his economy or his war anymore.
Speaker 1: He's just lying about them both and hoping loyalty to
Speaker 1: him will be enough. But just in case it isn't,
Speaker 1: Republicans are doing every craven thing they can to tip
Speaker 1: the scales and go around the voters to watch how
Speaker 1: far the Party of Reagan has fallen my former party.
Speaker 1: And I'm not just sad because my ideas aren't being
Speaker 1: platformed by a party I once love. I'm sad because
Speaker 1: no ideas are being platformed the party that once counted
Speaker 1: among its intellectuals in Rand and Hyak and Buckley, has
Speaker 1: no use for intellectualism anymore because the party's leader can't
Speaker 1: string a coherent sentence together. Because he villainizes experts because
Speaker 1: they won't lie for him. He believes his own voters
Speaker 1: are too stupid to know he's fleecing them. They have
Speaker 1: no use for ideas because Trump hasn't actually created anything ever.
Speaker 1: He just takes and puts his name on things. They
Speaker 1: have no use for competition because they know the Magabase
Speaker 1: is a cult that will agree with anything Trump does
Speaker 1: or says, even when it contradicts the last thing he
Speaker 1: did or said. Why bother compete? And I hate to
Speaker 1: say it, they benefit from the other party being factless
Speaker 1: and out of touch. I promise Trump isn't some Svengali
Speaker 1: or supernatural force. If the Democrats were better and stronger,
Speaker 1: Trump wouldn't be president today. Here we are with a
Speaker 1: party that's given up idea on ideas and competition, and
Speaker 1: another party that doesn't know how to show up. It's
Speaker 1: not a great place to be. But the good news
Speaker 1: is we have time. It's just over one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty five days until the midterms. We have just under
Speaker 1: six months to show up, and that doesn't just mean
Speaker 1: protesting Trump. It means showing up for Americans with an
Speaker 1: agenda of our own, instead of just letting Trump create
Speaker 1: our future. Let's describe our vision of America, and for me,
Speaker 1: that's an America in which hating a whole half of
Speaker 1: it isn't a requirement. You don't have to hate anyone
Speaker 1: to live in my America, and politicians who try to
Speaker 1: get you to hate other Americans are not reward for it.
Speaker 1: It's an America that isn't embarrassed of empathy or compassion.
Speaker 1: It's in America that doesn't villainize success or wealth, but
Speaker 1: that wants everyone to be prosperous instead of just a
Speaker 1: little less poor. It's an America where public servants are
Speaker 1: meant to affect change and solve problems, not get rich
Speaker 1: and famous. It's an America where our kids feel safe,
Speaker 1: where we can buy a home, where college grads can
Speaker 1: get jobs, where people don't have to work for jobs
Speaker 1: or until they're eighty. It's an America where communities are
Speaker 1: safe from gun violence and crime, where laws and borders
Speaker 1: are enforced, but where no law abiding citizen has to
Speaker 1: cower and fear of lawless goon squads or live in
Speaker 1: militarized zones. It's an America where you can count on
Speaker 1: free elections, free press, free speech, freedom of assembly, no
Speaker 1: matter what you look like or what you believe in,
Speaker 1: and a government that won't attack those institutions for its
Speaker 1: own personal gain or self survival. I don't think these
Speaker 1: things are complicated or unattainable. I just think we've forgotten
Speaker 1: the basics common decency, a functioning government, democratic ideals, a
Speaker 1: United States. And we have to let the Republicans know
Speaker 1: they can give up on us all they want. They
Speaker 1: can give up on ideas and competition, but they can't
Speaker 1: redraw us. They can't buy us, and they can't silence us.
Speaker 1: And that's up to you and me. Okay, after the break,
Speaker 1: my good pal John Avlon is here to discuss the
Speaker 1: week that was see that. Welcome back to Off the Cup.
Speaker 1: I'm joined now by my good friend and world famous,
Speaker 1: world renowned pepke mache artist John Avlon. Welcome John.
Speaker 3: I love that. I love that. You know what I
Speaker 3: love really is that I never pronounced it the French way, And.
Speaker 1: Well I'm a loser and a nerd and a Francophile,
Speaker 1: so I must.
Speaker 3: Pig for an Angler file. But there you go.
Speaker 1: No, I'm a I'm a Francophile.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: John Avlon is a journalist and historian. He's author of
Speaker 1: Washington's Farewell and Lincoln in the Fight for Peace. I
Speaker 1: know you're working on another book, but we're so happy
Speaker 1: to have you in between your Pepia mesche.
Speaker 3: I love it, I know, and we're going to create
Speaker 3: new personas every time I come on, just to keep.
Speaker 1: What we're doing here.
Speaker 3: Always fun to talk with you. That was a great monologue.
Speaker 3: And I'm not just saying that because I really agree
Speaker 3: with it, but it was. It was really you had
Speaker 3: a great arc. You had history, you had a Reagan
Speaker 3: clip I've never heard.
Speaker 1: Before, all the things you love I don't, and.
Speaker 3: You landed the plane with with regard to our challenges.
Speaker 1: Today, well, I wanted to have you on specifically because
Speaker 1: for this conversation, because you and I politically grew up together.
Speaker 1: The time I was describing was the time you were
Speaker 1: you were both present for, not only because you were
Speaker 1: also in politics at the time, but we like we
Speaker 1: were there together, and you know you you were I was.
Speaker 3: Never, never, And I was never a Republican. But I'm married,
Speaker 3: that's right. But but you were, and I worked for one.
Speaker 1: But you communed absolutely with us at times, and we
Speaker 1: were often efforting at the same project.
Speaker 3: Absolutely No, But I've been at committed centrist from the beginning,
Speaker 3: the lonely consistent radical centrist.
Speaker 1: But yes, yes, And then you know, you married a conservative,
Speaker 1: and you got some conservative friends, and you know.
Speaker 3: Sure I had them before we would do My best
Speaker 3: friends are libertarians.
Speaker 1: Yes, we'd have these late night discussions and it was
Speaker 1: a heady, fun time and no one knows and appreciates
Speaker 1: more than you do the I think the rigorous intellectual
Speaker 1: history of our politics, and for my purposes the purposes
Speaker 1: of this discussion, the intellectual history of the conservative movement.
Speaker 1: And you don't have to agreed with all of it
Speaker 1: to acknowledge it was a foundational part of the movement
Speaker 1: and the movements success. And I'm wondering where you think
Speaker 1: that's all gone? It was it just Trump? Was it
Speaker 1: the Tea Party?
Speaker 3: Was it? Right?
Speaker 1: So take take me through John Avalon's a train of
Speaker 1: thought on where intellectualism went.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, so I'm gonna have a slight alternate history,
Speaker 3: but it's it's not without admiring certain elements. I mean,
Speaker 3: I try to see the three sixty. It is true
Speaker 3: that conservatism got a jolt in reaction to the rise
Speaker 3: of the New Deal and echoes of those policies that
Speaker 3: seemed stalitarian, not by world standards but by historic American standards.
Speaker 3: It's true that the movement got another jolt. Uh and
Speaker 3: and and I say this with some hesitation, because one
Speaker 3: of the things I share with you is a deep
Speaker 3: dislike of identity politics. And I think one of the
Speaker 3: democrats real problems is a reflexive impulse to call people
Speaker 3: they disagree with racist. But it is also historically undeniable
Speaker 3: that Conservatism got another jolt in the wake of reactions
Speaker 3: to Brown versus Board of Education, which is where you
Speaker 3: saw the demonization of Republicans like Earl Warren, who who
Speaker 3: was the chief Supremeport chief just the time, who'd been
Speaker 3: a centrist Republican, which is a great tradition and one
Speaker 3: you know, if you look at the history of early
Speaker 3: Republican Party, it's a moderate progressive party founder by Lincoln
Speaker 3: tr tradition, what Hoover once called a independent. He was
Speaker 3: an independent progressive in the Republican tradition, which sounds like
Speaker 3: a contradiction until you think about it, and then and then,
Speaker 3: and then, of course the political map flips abruptly. In
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty four, Barry Goldwater puts forward a lot of
Speaker 3: ideas which were inspiring to people from a libertarian stance,
Speaker 3: but in the context of the time, it's the he
Speaker 3: is opposing the Civil Rights Act, in the Voting Rights.
Speaker 1: Act and guess ury and voting guess what.
Speaker 3: The South goes from voting solid Democrat, which had been
Speaker 3: the conservative populist party at the time States Rights Party,
Speaker 3: to flipping of the Republican Party on a dime after
Speaker 3: one hundred years. That's not coincident. It's not incidental. It's
Speaker 3: fundamental right. And so for me, you know, the conservative populace,
Speaker 3: I'm big on finding common ground. But if you got
Speaker 3: to pick a Chus side in the overall intellectual debate,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to be with the conservative populists or
Speaker 3: folks who believe on some level that society is held
Speaker 3: together by belief that might makes right. I'm going to
Speaker 3: go with Lincoln consistently that we need to forge a
Speaker 3: society where right, makes might, and we need to find
Speaker 3: a way to find common ground. But so even in
Speaker 3: our lifetime and careers, I worked for Rudy Giuliani during
Speaker 3: nine to eleven. I deeply believed I was sort of
Speaker 3: a DLC Democratic Clinton kid. I know that's an athematic
Speaker 3: of you, but to me, that movement made a lot
Speaker 3: of sense in building a third way, the Clinton Blair tradition,
Speaker 3: and Rudy was an extension of that in the context
Speaker 3: of you know, New York. He was fiscally conservative, he
Speaker 3: was tough on crime, things that I identify with, but
Speaker 3: he was also pro choice, pro gay rights, pro healthcare,
Speaker 3: poe immigrant ye. And then came nine eleven, which was
Speaker 3: fundamental to me too. I was his chief speech right
Speaker 3: at the time, and you know, was there when the
Speaker 3: towers fell and wrote the Old Juice of the firefighters
Speaker 3: and police officers with members of my team. But then
Speaker 3: something happened, and it became pretty quick. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: the Bush administration w squandered that moment of national unity
Speaker 3: and international sympathy and also squandered the hard one deficit
Speaker 3: that occurred, deficit to zero. For physical conservatives, they they
Speaker 3: should consider Bill Clinton the best they ever had, right,
Speaker 3: And yes, it happened with the Republican Congress, but we
Speaker 3: were at zero and then a bunch of folks in
Speaker 3: the Republican Party said we're going to give that back
Speaker 3: in terms of tax cuts, and Dick Cheney tells the
Speaker 3: Treasury Secretary John Snow, the deficits don't matter politically, and
Speaker 3: so you've got massive deficit spending and an over extension
Speaker 3: in the world with Iraq as opposed to Afghanistan, and then.
Speaker 1: Bailing out banks. I mean, that was the thing that
Speaker 1: really which, by the way, I did a Tea Party movement.
Speaker 3: It didn't It didn't right if you said, one of
Speaker 3: the books behind me is wing Nuts, which I wrote
Speaker 3: in twenty ten based in my reporting in two thousand
Speaker 3: and nine. You know, you were very involved in the
Speaker 3: Tea Party movement. That's when we first met, and I
Speaker 3: was you know, it was a fractured coalition and there
Speaker 3: were parts. You know, I'm a fiscal responsibility guy, which
Speaker 3: is my way into fiscal discipline or fiscal conservatism. I
Speaker 3: think that you need to deal with revenue as part
Speaker 3: of the equation. And that's why I never bought the
Speaker 3: Grover Norquist you know, it was government straw sol enough
Speaker 3: to strangle on a bathtub. That seemed unwise to me
Speaker 3: on several levels. But you know, if you go back
Speaker 3: and look at the reporting, then what was really weird,
Speaker 3: And there were surveys that showed this is it wasn't. Yes,
Speaker 3: it was taxed enough already, and it was a great
Speaker 3: avatar and it was a little astro turf. But it
Speaker 3: was also definitely a reaction to the election of Barack Obama,
Speaker 3: which you could see, you know, in my book, like
Speaker 3: they unintentionally, I believe, unintentionally for the most part, resuscitated
Speaker 3: slogans from white citizen councils about massive resistance to Barack
Speaker 3: Obama's election, which was not close, but was considered an imposition. Right.
Speaker 3: You had Rush Limba and other folks talking about, you know,
Speaker 3: they want us to bend over, you know, you know,
Speaker 3: you know, all this sort of you know, imposition rhetoric.
Speaker 3: But then also it was a constant thing I saw
Speaker 3: of interviewing people. I'd see them with an Obama Hitler
Speaker 3: poster and I'd say what are you doing And they'd
Speaker 3: say one of two things. One they'd say, well, they
Speaker 3: compared Bush to Hitler and so I figured it's fair game,
Speaker 3: which to me is this is the sin of how
Speaker 3: extremes empower each other. The second thing they talk about,
Speaker 3: and my mother's from Youngstown, Ohio, but an immigrant family,
Speaker 3: so this is relevant to the story is they'd say,
Speaker 3: my family's been here for seven generations and there was
Speaker 3: a nativist, anti immigrant element.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And when I wrote even my first book, Independent Nation,
Speaker 3: which is the history of centrist leaders, in two thousand
Speaker 3: and four, one of the reasons that even though I
Speaker 3: I worked for Rudy and met my wife working for Rudy,
Speaker 3: who is a Republican, I looked at centrist Republicans always
Speaker 3: got used by the party to win where they couldn't
Speaker 3: win otherwise and then immediately discarded. And I felt that
Speaker 3: beneath conservative populism, which was the energy, was an authoritarian streak,
Speaker 3: an authoritarian impulse, a belief that might makes right. And
Speaker 3: all these liberal niceties keep getting us the way of
Speaker 3: acknowledging that where the real power is and should be.
Speaker 3: And I will talk all day along about the way
Speaker 3: that the extremes empower each other, and the far left
Speaker 3: has not confronted why in the world it is so
Speaker 3: damaging The Democratic brand, and the Democrats don't want to
Speaker 3: deal with the fact that their brand is less popular
Speaker 3: than Donald Trump's at a time that Donald Trump's actively
Speaker 3: a threat to the republic and doing incompetent governance, chaos,
Speaker 3: all the things actually Reagan called out, So I can
Speaker 3: you know that's important. What interests me, like what interests you,
Speaker 3: is is how do we reunite the nation? How do
Speaker 3: we get to our three hundred birthday? Knowing that that
Speaker 3: is imperable. And the corrupting influence of the partisan economy
Speaker 3: and causing so many people to abandon their principles because
Speaker 3: they profit personally and politically, Yes, offends me so much.
Speaker 3: And you have walked that walk and talked that talk.
Speaker 3: And that's one of the reasons we are friends. It's
Speaker 3: not about political or one percent agreement. That's a cult. Yeah,
Speaker 3: It's actually about consistency of principles, which is what I
Speaker 3: deeply appreciate.
Speaker 1: Well, consistency and you know, intellectual honesty and consistency.
Speaker 3: Long walk there, but I just want to say I
Speaker 3: appreciate you. See.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, and it's such a lost art, the lost
Speaker 1: art of intellectual honesty and consistency inside politics. But also
Speaker 1: punditry is like, like I can count on one hand
Speaker 1: people that care about things like hypocrisy and consistency, and
Speaker 1: it's that's that's very upset.
Speaker 3: He knew though, right, I mean, it.
Speaker 1: Feels more than what we're talking about.
Speaker 3: Right, because the whole point of and look, I left
Speaker 3: seeing Underrun for Congress because I was tired of just
Speaker 3: talking about things. As much as I like talking about
Speaker 3: things and love books, but to me it was like
Speaker 3: that's not enough, especially in a time of crisis, for
Speaker 3: better forms. But the whole point to do this, and
Speaker 3: I love the column form and your great columnist, and
Speaker 3: I write column still, and I wrote an anthology of
Speaker 3: calumnists with two dear friends of mine, was to have
Speaker 3: intellectual integrity. That was the whole point. If you had
Speaker 3: no intellectual integrity and consistency, even if your principles your
Speaker 3: politics evolved over time, that was interesting, But there was
Speaker 3: a flow through the idea that that that principles were
Speaker 3: for suckers and hypocrisy was unmentioned because that's how you
Speaker 3: were getting paid.
Speaker 1: Is loathesome completely. I could and I can't do it.
Speaker 1: I've I can't good even try to do it. I
Speaker 1: don't know how people do it, but I am not
Speaker 1: built to.
Speaker 3: Do that because you have an arm and soul and
Speaker 3: your action.
Speaker 1: No, right after John McCain died, I wrote a piece
Speaker 1: for Vanity Fair called the Conservative Coma, in which I
Speaker 1: sort of described the Conservative movement as if it was
Speaker 1: like on life support. It was dormant but not dead.
Speaker 1: That was twenty eighteen, and I think I still had
Speaker 1: hope then that the Conservative movement I knew could be resurrected.
Speaker 1: I'm not so sure now where are you?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: I not in hoping for it, but do you think
Speaker 1: it's possible then? The Conservative movement I remember that you remember,
Speaker 1: could come back in some way.
Speaker 3: No, I'm much more interested in the forward looking project
Speaker 3: of how we form new coalitions. But but you know
Speaker 3: my wife, Margaret, who is the firing line, who you know,
Speaker 3: of course know well and some of your audience might
Speaker 3: you know to me the you know, she's always joked
Speaker 3: about how you know I'm going to be like the
Speaker 3: Bernie Sanders, you know where I've been saying the same
Speaker 3: thing for thirty years and I'm finally improved, you know, vindicated,
Speaker 3: you know when I'm you know, waving fists and you.
Speaker 1: Know, off my mind, but yeah, yeah, with.
Speaker 3: A crackling voice and you know, geriatric demeanor. I've always
Speaker 3: believed we need to form a new coalition. The center
Speaker 3: right and the center left needs to unite. There's more
Speaker 3: than unites the center right and the center left than
Speaker 3: the extremes of their own parties. That are the moderate
Speaker 3: majority in America has had its power diluted because of
Speaker 3: the polarization, the artificial polarization of the two parties, and
Speaker 3: that we need fundamental reforms to save the American experiment.
Speaker 3: So I would, and this doesn't need to sound pollyannish.
Speaker 3: This is practical if you look at the problems we're facing.
Speaker 3: So I don't you know, are there conservative ideas and
Speaker 3: thinkers that I admire? Sure? Have I ever been about
Speaker 3: that project wholesale as a part of my identity. No,
Speaker 3: But we need to find new coalitions to get through
Speaker 3: this moment and to engage in the larger project of
Speaker 3: reuniting the nation.
Speaker 1: Do you think that my conservatism, my version of it,
Speaker 1: you're blend with your version in a way that could
Speaker 1: form a coalition.
Speaker 3: Yes, But again I'm not a conservative. I'm a centrist,
Speaker 3: a radical.
Speaker 1: Sense that that's why I'm saying it.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, one hundred percent, that's why.
Speaker 1: I'm saying because you don't agree with me on everything.
Speaker 1: But no, you think you know my version of conservatism
Speaker 1: and what I believe in.
Speaker 3: I do. But even even in the heyday of your conservatism,
Speaker 3: I think if people, I mean, one of the things
Speaker 3: I appreciate about your view is you are not a
Speaker 3: person of faith, but you know a great deal about faith, right,
Speaker 3: you know, that's super interesting and important. Uh And and
Speaker 3: I think they're members of the conservative coalition that would
Speaker 3: would reluctantly overlook that only if you stayed quiet and
Speaker 3: in your place, right. Yeah, in the same way they're
Speaker 3: willing to, you know, tolerate degrees of difference as long
Speaker 3: as they you know, keep in their their their lane.
Speaker 1: I got to be honest, I was, you know, when
Speaker 1: I was deep inside the Republican Party in the conservative movement,
Speaker 1: no one cared that I was an atheist. I mean,
Speaker 1: some people at foxed it, but like you know, the
Speaker 1: the party didn't care. They thought it was really cool
Speaker 1: to have this young, sort of edgy atheist out there
Speaker 1: talking positively about religion. By the way, they didn't care
Speaker 1: that I was against capital punishment. They didn't care that
Speaker 1: I was in favor of gay marriage and gay rights,
Speaker 1: and they didn't care that I was pro life. But
Speaker 1: all that meant was that I won't go get an abortion.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to overturn row. They didn't care. What
Speaker 1: they started caring about was when I wasn't with Trump, right.
Speaker 3: And I think that's about two things. Right. One, what
Speaker 3: I really appreciate about your version of conservatism is is
Speaker 3: the hecter dux nature of it, right, which to me
Speaker 3: is a sign that somebody's thinking. I found a posted
Speaker 3: a quote from Orwell the other day. I hadn't heard,
Speaker 3: and I'm a big Orweld fan, but it was basically,
Speaker 3: you know how heterdox thinking is a mark of intellectual
Speaker 3: integrity and independence. Right.
Speaker 1: Can I just I'm going to let you continue. I'll
Speaker 1: agree with you and pat myself on the back for that.
Speaker 1: But I can also just tell you to me, all
Speaker 1: of my positions feel very conservative, and I can back
Speaker 1: that like I can make the conservative case for being
Speaker 1: in favor of gay rights and getting the government out.
Speaker 3: Of private life.
Speaker 1: I can make the conservative case for everything I just said.
Speaker 3: But continue, Yes you can, but I think it's also
Speaker 3: a matter of of of what's your role, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, the Republican Party is delighted to have Charlie
Speaker 3: Baker and Larry Hogan and his coalition as long as
Speaker 3: they've got power and are the most popular governors in
Speaker 3: the US a right in Massachusetts and Maryland. But they
Speaker 3: you know, not even a prayer running for president because
Speaker 3: then they nail you to the wall as an apostate,
Speaker 3: that's right. So and we've seen that pattern recur, and
Speaker 3: so that's why I don't have a ton of patients
Speaker 3: for it within that what had been that transaction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but what.
Speaker 3: Really troubles me is that you know, the the in
Speaker 3: what you the buzz saw you ran into, which ultimately
Speaker 3: came in sort of a cult, like you know, authoritarian.
Speaker 3: You're either with us against us, which is against the
Speaker 3: best elements, right. I Mean the reason you one of
Speaker 3: the reasons you became a conservative, I think in college
Speaker 3: is because that was actually rebellious. It was actually independent.
Speaker 3: It didn't involve sort of outsourcing your opinions and staying
Speaker 3: quiet where you disagreed, which is treason us to intellectual
Speaker 3: integrity and and like active citizenship. Uh, and I always
Speaker 3: thought that the far left on campus is the single
Speaker 3: greatest recruiter of young conservatives because of their inherent absurdity.
Speaker 3: And that's totalitarian assumption, right.
Speaker 1: Yes, uhgevative, Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: But but you know what's terrible to me is that,
Speaker 3: you know, because we are we are not you know,
Speaker 3: this is uh trying to choose words without double entonos.
Speaker 3: We contain multitudes, like Walt Whitman says, right, and so
Speaker 3: the idea that you should outsource your opinions to walk
Speaker 3: in lockstep with the brand A brand B version of
Speaker 3: politics is so insane from the gidea.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And then when people get into politics, and I think
Speaker 3: one of the only reasons I well, I'd like to
Speaker 3: think this would have happened regardless. But I remained a
Speaker 3: centrals Democrat independent, you know, not uh was was I
Speaker 3: didn't work in Washington because then the acculturation forces you, right,
Speaker 3: you see people come in and maybe they're slightly centered, right,
Speaker 3: but they had a job opportunity here, and and you
Speaker 3: got to get put on a jersey that's so un American.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: My opponent not that you know, in the last in
Speaker 3: the last election, had been like he'd only worked for
Speaker 3: the government's Republican conservative trumper, but he was the worked
Speaker 3: to the Nicoloda in New York point. But this one
Speaker 3: detail that always bothered me, which was when he was
Speaker 3: running the Board of Elections, which is supposed to oversee
Speaker 3: elections on Fridays, he made the Republican appointees wear red shirts.
Speaker 3: It was literally like, put on your jersey, don't forget
Speaker 3: who got you this job, which is itself so not conservatism, right.
Speaker 1: That's so gross, it's under level.
Speaker 3: But but that is, you know, that's a thing. And
Speaker 3: that that's, by the way, just a really small local
Speaker 3: manifestation of the larger problem. And the the Parsian economy
Speaker 3: is so corrupting, and it's so seductive and and all
Speaker 3: it asks is that you surrender your integrity and your soul,
Speaker 3: and you will leap riches, you will climb to the
Speaker 3: greasy poles. So when I see the Trump appointees all
Speaker 3: being coached, whatever you don't say, Biden, one's we're going
Speaker 3: to give you a very cute phrase. And these are
Speaker 3: people for positions that involve reality or in judicating reality,
Speaker 3: and they have all agreed that they will just show
Speaker 3: contempt for reason and facts in order to get ahead.
Speaker 3: That is such a dangerous deal for a democracy, and
Speaker 3: that's where we are, and so we're right to fight
Speaker 3: against it. And we will lose wars, and God knows
Speaker 3: we have, but we will, we will. We may lose battles, yeah,
Speaker 3: but I deeply believe that we will win the war
Speaker 3: at the end of the day. But we got to
Speaker 3: keep fighting in order to do that.
Speaker 1: Before uh, we turned to our sort of lightning round
Speaker 1: exit poll. I just want to talk about the left
Speaker 1: for a second, because they're implicated in this too, and
Speaker 1: I feel like the right's gotten the right's gotn so
Speaker 1: bad that the left kind of got paralyzed. It feels like,
Speaker 1: oh to me, it feels like liberalism is a bit
Speaker 1: of a coma too. To tell average voters in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four that the economy was great, crime was down,
Speaker 1: there's no migrot crisis, was like, who are you serving
Speaker 1: with this? And I just saw an ad from Karen
Speaker 1: Bass in LA that was basically like, LA is great,
Speaker 1: It's on the right track. We don't need some wacko
Speaker 1: reality start to come along and mess it up. Forget Spencer,
Speaker 1: but like LA is on the right track. What are you?
Speaker 1: What drugs are you on? And why why are they
Speaker 1: fighting so hard for the status quo?
Speaker 3: That's I don't like.
Speaker 1: That is not inspiring to anyone to fight for the
Speaker 1: status quo. And I'm not mad at Spencer. I'm mad
Speaker 1: at Democrats for not fielding a Spencer. Anyone could have
Speaker 1: diagnosed the problems in LA and Democrats fielded the current
Speaker 1: sitting Meger and the current city council member instead of
Speaker 1: someone like Spencer who would identify all the problems and
Speaker 1: say I'm going to actually fix this stuff. Don't put
Speaker 1: out at Spencer, be mad you didn't field a Democratic Spencer.
Speaker 3: So that's worth totally unpacking. And of course you're right.
Speaker 3: First of all, this is one of my deepest beliefs,
Speaker 3: particularly right now, particularly in blue states or blue cities.
Speaker 3: The center left cannot be needs to be a force
Speaker 3: for reform, for taking the best ideas, confronting the problems directly,
Speaker 3: and that's my vision of how you can be a
Speaker 3: radical centrist. What it cannot be, and too often is,
Speaker 3: is a defender of a failed and stale status quo.
Speaker 3: And that's how we lose. And it's compounded in blue
Speaker 3: states and blue cities because there's a sense that, oh,
Speaker 3: it's a one party city, it's a one party state.
Speaker 3: Wait your turn, get in line, climb the greasy pole.
Speaker 3: So it does not encourage people to get out and
Speaker 3: be a political entrepreneur based on being a committed citizen
Speaker 3: and say, you know what, screw it, I'm in this
Speaker 3: race and I'll be the disruptor.
Speaker 1: But it's also they're also in a defensive crouch because
Speaker 1: Republicans and Trump keep painting, you know, these Democratic cities
Speaker 1: as failures, and so they want to defend themselves and
Speaker 1: in doing so, they are defending terrible policies and the
Speaker 1: status quo.
Speaker 3: And the problem is is this is the the coalition.
Speaker 3: First of all, the parties are not you know, this
Speaker 3: is not it is a bureaucracy. But it's not a conspiracy, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, there's not a struck. Anyone could have run
Speaker 3: to your point. But because of the coalitional nature of
Speaker 3: the Democratic Party, everyone too many Often when you run
Speaker 3: for office, people tiptoe around special interest groups for fear
Speaker 3: of offending them because it might cost them politically, and
Speaker 3: so they cannot say or do anything useful. You gotta
Speaker 3: eliminate yourself from that. Now, California's open primary top two
Speaker 3: should liberate people for that for that first. But that
Speaker 3: is one of the biggest problems facing the left. Everybody's
Speaker 3: afraid of offending some constituency and so they can't speak
Speaker 3: common sense and people can smell bullshit. Excuse me, I'm
Speaker 3: not sure if I'm allowed to say that, my heart,
Speaker 3: but you'll be able to bleep me if I'm not.
Speaker 3: And so that's a huge problem. The alternative is someone
Speaker 3: who's undermining fundamental American values in a way that are
Speaker 3: going to have a negative impact on American exceptionalism and
Speaker 3: the Republic for decades. So again, don't you know, don't
Speaker 3: don't fall into some echo of but her emails. But
Speaker 3: centrist Democrats need to grow some spine. They need to
Speaker 3: actually start calling bullshit. They need to start getting Democrats
Speaker 3: need to ditch identity politics. I'll say that all day long.
Speaker 3: And then we need to build a new coalition that
Speaker 3: actually finds common ground and common cost with the center
Speaker 3: right and center left and cast off the authoritarian impulse
Speaker 3: sort of folks on the far right and and the
Speaker 3: the tribalism on the far left and really start focusing
Speaker 3: on what unites is not what devis us, but doing
Speaker 3: it in a way that solves problems and plays offense
Speaker 3: simply like you know, harbor your resources to defend the
Speaker 3: status quo. And that's I think what we mean by
Speaker 3: the patriotic center, and that's what we need to build well.
Speaker 1: And it starts with acknowledging some of the things that
Speaker 1: you did wrong. And that's why I think not releasing
Speaker 1: that DNC autopsy is such a critical mistake.
Speaker 3: It's it's it's it's it's all the problems, it's it's
Speaker 3: it's only the only thing that was missed that I
Speaker 3: would add to that is when the DNC said it
Speaker 3: was going to unilaterally disarm and not use AI. Well,
Speaker 3: while the Trump team is spending you know, one hundred
Speaker 3: million dollars because we're dealing with weapons grade disinformation uh
Speaker 3: and and corrupt deals that then propagate that. I mean,
Speaker 3: everyone's got to wake wake the hell up and realize
Speaker 3: that this is it's, it's it's every this is the
Speaker 3: time to be a citizen. Everyone's got to roll up
Speaker 3: their sleeves and get in the game, because if you
Speaker 3: sleep through the next few cycles, you know, you're not
Speaker 3: gonna work our country, which is a great country, inevitably
Speaker 3: flawed but great. We we will look back on great regret,
Speaker 3: and so we have an opportunity and obligation to unfuck
Speaker 3: it in our lifetime.
Speaker 1: Exactly right. Okay, let's get to our exit poll, a
Speaker 1: little mental health moment. It's a few questions of varying
Speaker 1: degrees of seriousness. First, what is John Avalon's favorite movie
Speaker 1: about politics?
Speaker 3: Oh? Well, you narrowed it right there. In some level,
Speaker 3: The Godfather Too is about politics, But on some level,
Speaker 3: The Godfather Too is.
Speaker 1: About family, family politics.
Speaker 3: You know, I love mister Smisch goes to Washington, you know,
Speaker 3: but I'm a Frank Capri Kada guy.
Speaker 1: Of course. Yeah. What's your favorite movie about journalism?
Speaker 3: Network? Or good Night and good Luck?
Speaker 1: Those are two go oh yeah, those are very avline picks.
Speaker 1: Those are great. Okay, you ran for Congress, If you
Speaker 1: ran for president, what would your on stage song be,
Speaker 1: assuming you could get the rights to it?
Speaker 3: That's fun, let's see, I mean to walk on music? Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean probably probably where the streets have no name.
Speaker 3: A live version, you know, from Great Livers. Well, it's
Speaker 3: one of my favorite songs. You two is my favorite band.
Speaker 3: I'm not afraid to admit it. It's the war on apathy.
Speaker 1: I can hear the campaign ads now. He won't even
Speaker 1: walk on to an American artist.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's right. Well, you know, in some ways,
Speaker 3: and it's probably you know, Bono was challenging us to
Speaker 3: be better Americans, more true to the spirit of the Declaration. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, I just I love you two. I'm more
Speaker 3: been willing to take on on the on their haters.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so a personal it's a personal path, Yeah, got it. Uh.
Speaker 1: How do you protect your mental health from all the
Speaker 1: bad incoming the bad news?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a great question. I think there is, Like you, Uh, partly,
Speaker 3: I've gotten a culturated two. I don't over index the
Speaker 3: crazy haters. Obviously, running accelerates that, but not significantly more
Speaker 3: than being a journalist, you know, in in that CNN
Speaker 3: or in the Trump here. I do think it's important
Speaker 3: to make time to work out, to uh not seek
Speaker 3: false solace, right, to not distract yourself, and you know, uh,
Speaker 3: to spend time with children, your children, you know, which
Speaker 3: is a heart replenisher. And and and and you got
Speaker 3: to watch your diet. I mean, the dopamine addiction we're
Speaker 3: all suffering from is partly what destabilize and numbs simultaneously.
Speaker 3: So uh, you know, you know, thoughts are things and uh,
Speaker 3: and you know, be mindful of what you pay attention
Speaker 3: to consume.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Finally, last question is very important to me. It's
Speaker 1: a part of my culture and spiritual identity. When is
Speaker 1: it iced coffee season.
Speaker 3: Well, the answer you want is always.
Speaker 1: Uh, that is the answer I want. But what is
Speaker 1: your answer.
Speaker 3: If if I if the restaurant, I will, I will
Speaker 3: drink ice coffee at any time of year. I will
Speaker 3: also drink hot coffee. I fight, you know, I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm not you know, it's not a seasonal thing.
Speaker 1: It's really just one the correct answer.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 1: It's year round to get a correct answer. You know
Speaker 1: why because you're centrist. Yes, it's a centrist answer whenever.
Speaker 3: You want, but a fighting centrist.
Speaker 1: Love it. John Avalon, thanks so much for coming on.
Speaker 1: This was a right conversation. I knew it would be
Speaker 1: always and come back to talk about your new book.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well that's not you know it's going to come
Speaker 3: out in March. It's going to be next March, So
Speaker 3: we got some time. Let's we'll hang out before them,
Speaker 3: but you'll be called Theodore Roosevelt's Guide to Life.
Speaker 1: Exciting. Great, right, Thank care, Thanks Bud, Well, thanks to John.
Speaker 1: Before we go, my producer Derek tells me we've got
Speaker 1: some mail at off the cop Derek, what do we got?
Speaker 3: We do?
Speaker 4: We have a note from listener Mac, and it actually
Speaker 4: fits really well with the conversation that you and John
Speaker 4: just had because he is hearkening back to remember a
Speaker 4: few months ago the trend of like flashback to twenty sixteen.
Speaker 4: This was how everyone was taught on social media talking
Speaker 4: about Yes.
Speaker 1: I did that, I did it on Instagram. Yeah all right, So.
Speaker 4: Max says, my question is what policy issue would you
Speaker 4: say you've shifted on the most since twenty sixteen?
Speaker 1: Slash?
Speaker 3: Are there any.
Speaker 4: Views you espoused back then that perhaps you might not now?
Speaker 4: And bonus, you've been very brave in sticking to your
Speaker 4: principles and values since twenty sixteen? Have you lost any
Speaker 4: friends along the way in doing so? Thanks for all
Speaker 4: the work you do, love from the UK.
Speaker 2: Mac.
Speaker 1: Well, what a lovely note and what great great questions. Well,
Speaker 1: I have thought about this, and I've been asked this
Speaker 1: quite a bit. What I've changed, and the short answer
Speaker 1: is nothing. The short answer is all the stuff I
Speaker 1: believed in then I believe in today. My party has
Speaker 1: changed around me. So what I believe in doesn't seem
Speaker 1: Republican or conservative today, but it is definitely still conservative.
Speaker 1: It's definitely not where the Republican Party is. I think
Speaker 1: on a very I don't know if it's small or
Speaker 1: not small, But on a discrete issue, I've become a
Speaker 1: fan of term limits over the past ten years. I
Speaker 1: was not a fan of term limits. I thought term
Speaker 1: limits were undemocratic, and I thought term limits kind of
Speaker 1: took a decision away from voters. If voters really liked
Speaker 1: an elected member despite their age and wanted to keep
Speaker 1: voting for that member, why should they have to stop
Speaker 1: voting for that member because they reached a certain age.
Speaker 1: But now increasingly I am a favor of term limits,
Speaker 1: like everywhere. But the other thing I'll say is like,
Speaker 1: there's stuff I did. I was thinking about this recently.
Speaker 1: When I worked at Fox for about two years. I
Speaker 1: was never paid, but that's where I was coming on
Speaker 1: a lot when I first came into politics and media,
Speaker 1: and there was stuff I did there that I know
Speaker 1: I did because I was new and young and felt
Speaker 1: like I was performing for an audience. That audience was
Speaker 1: like Fox executives, and because I wanted a contract now.
Speaker 1: I didn't do I wouldn't do like birtherism. I didn't
Speaker 1: do the racism that they were dealing in. I didn't
Speaker 1: do anything I'm ashamed of or that like I wish,
Speaker 1: I didn't do anything I didn't believe in, but like
Speaker 1: I knew, I was kind of hard on. Like this
Speaker 1: one example I'll never forget I was I was called
Speaker 1: to do Hannity's show for the first time, and doing
Speaker 1: Sean Hannity's show in primetime was like a big step up.
Speaker 1: And I'd been doing dayside at Fox for you know,
Speaker 1: a year. Finally got the call to Common like the
Speaker 1: Big the Big Time Show with Sean Hannity, and I
Speaker 1: was told this is an audition and the topic I
Speaker 1: was given was I think Obama had just appointed Leon
Speaker 1: Panetta to like CIA wasn't a big it wasn't a
Speaker 1: very juicy topic. I didn't have strong feelings about it,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know Leon Panetta. I was twenty five,
Speaker 1: Like I didn't grow up knowing that Leon Panetta was
Speaker 1: Clinton's chief of staff, like I didn't know anything about him.
Speaker 1: So I looked and looked and looked and tried to
Speaker 1: find some controversy, some scandal I could point to, because
Speaker 1: I knew I was supposed to not like this pick,
Speaker 1: whatever it was. I knew I was supposed to hate
Speaker 1: this pick and find it really problematic. But I couldn't
Speaker 1: find the thing. So I think I went on and
Speaker 1: I did something really vague like, well, you know, he's
Speaker 1: a career Democrat and this should be a nonpartisan post,
Speaker 1: something not very strong, but I said it because I
Speaker 1: knew I was supposed to not like this pick. And
Speaker 1: I just remember when I left Fox, like never wanting
Speaker 1: to feel that way again. It felt icky, And again
Speaker 1: that's a very small thing, like I didn't do things
Speaker 1: that really broke my character, like my moral compass, but
Speaker 1: I know I did things because I was performing, and
Speaker 1: I knew i'd never wanted to perform again. That didn't
Speaker 1: feel good. So certainly in the past ten years, I've
Speaker 1: really stopped performing, and I've only, you know, done things
Speaker 1: that I believe in and want to do. And if
Speaker 1: I can't find it, I'll say that and I'll agree
Speaker 1: with you know the side I'm not supposed to agree
Speaker 1: with or whatever. But yeah, the short answers, I've changed,
Speaker 1: no opinions. I'm the same. I'm the same, gal Well.
Speaker 4: That was a very reflective answer at the end of
Speaker 4: a very reflective episode.
Speaker 1: So this has been great.
Speaker 3: Thank you Mac for sending in the question.
Speaker 4: You can send more questions to the email Off the
Speaker 4: Cup at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: Off the Cup with two p's. Yeah, I would love
Speaker 1: to get your mail and read your mail on the air.
Speaker 1: That's it for us this week. Thanks for tuning in,
Speaker 1: and we'll see you next time. Off the Cup is
Speaker 1: a production of iHeart Podcast as part of the Reason
Speaker 1: Choice Network. If you want more, check out the other
Speaker 1: Reason Choice podcasts, Politics with Jamel Hill and Native Land Pod.
Speaker 1: For Off the Cup, I'm your host, Si Cup, editing
Speaker 1: and sound design by Derek Clements. Our executive producers are
Speaker 1: me Si Cup and Lauren Hanson. Rate and review wherever
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Speaker 1: every week.