This summer, I published my first book: an insider's look at the making of the modern Republican Party. The idea was to explain how an aligning of events invited Donald Trump's hijacking of the GOP.
I spent the past decade covering Republican politics, stuffing dozens of notebooks full of reporting that would come back to animate the pages of this book. In addition, I conducted hundreds of fresh, exclusive interviews with the key players, including with President Trump, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Jim DeMint, and Reince Priebus, among many others. (Sarah Palin declined to be interviewed, but Trump took it upon himself to defend her legacy, telling me how she'd helped spark the anti-establishment movement.)
The conclusion I reached: Only by viewing Trump as the product of a decade-long civil war inside the GOP can we understand how he won the White House and consider the questions at the center of America's current turmoil:
- Why are Republican elected officials so afraid of dissenting from Trump?
- How did a party once obsessed with national insolvency come to champion trillion-dollar deficits?
- How did the party of compassionate conservatism become the party of Muslim bans and family separation?
- How did the party of family values elect a thrice-married philanderer?
- And, most important, how long can such a party survive?
Ask me anything. (Read more about the book here.)
Proof: https://twitter.com/politico/status/1181272059088965633
Edit: This has been fun -- thanks for the great questions, and sorry for the looooong answers. Hope to do this again soon! -TA
