Figures the strand is a false fiber that run by thirdgeneration owner. We want to thank all of you for your support. Without a multimedia booklovers and offers like carl and steve we wouldnt be here today and we are so appreciative. So tonight were said to have with us carl hoffman in stephen for a double book launch. Carl is a former contribute editor at the National Geographic traveler and his travels on assignments to 80 countries turkeys off of five books, savage harvest was in the times editors choice, New York Times bestseller, the Washington Post notable book of the year and has been translated into nine languages. The last wild man was a finalist for the competition. The lunatic express was named one of the ten best books of the year by the wall street journal. I marks launch of his latest book liars circus a strange and terrifying journey into the upsidedown world of trumps maga rallies. Steve benen is a producer on the Rachel Maddow show and author of the maddow blog. His articles and bits office o. In the near times, Washington Monthly the american prospect salon. Com and other publications. For his work on the Rachel Maddow show has received to make any awards, has been nominated for three more. Tonight is in it for his new book impostors so without further ado please join me in welcoming steve and carl to the stage. Thank you. I appreciate that. Its great to be. I think this the impostors fight against. Carl, congratulations on the launch book. I had a chance to read last week. Cause i would meet with Republican National convention which make for an interesting experience. One of the things i saw at the convention that i thought dovetailed well with the book was the convention, republish acting as if trump was basically the country, that there is a decision what is the United States and whats good for the present. I think just the same can attain when reading your book and reading what people are saying to you at the rallies and im wondering do you think those points are more or less the same that those threads tie together . If so what is is about trump and what does it say about them . Clearly trumps whole thing has been to kind of mailed and confuse the state with the man meld. And if you dont support trump, you are antiamerican. You are a loser. Youre either a winner or a loser, in trumps world. And at the rallies thats really, really apparent when you go from the very first rally i went into in minneapolis in october, i was struck by this whole kind of, i i was struck y something i think we saw at the convention this last week, too, which was this surprised me, this idea, trump appeared dig to me. Hes a big man physically, but he appeared big. Hes up there on the stage and hes incredibly selfconfident and he looks strong in this kind of sort of third world strongman and he grows. This crowd is a bear, this wild crowd, mob, that is screaming for him and he kind of grows and he gets bigger and bigger. I was shocked by that when i first saw it because you care about these things that you really see it, and im not honesty but yet i felt that power. Over the last three months or so, four or five months net income at times, trump has been on the road since hes been in the background. He hasnt had that screaming mob. Hes like a blue with a big hole in it. Lets face it, in that he needs that crowd, the screening people or the air that makes them big. Suddenly we saw at the convention this sort of reinstallation especially like the last night, and so he gets big and to his followers he is the state, for sure. Its classic sort of authoritarianism rightwing populism. If you oppose him you are a traitor. All of those things come into play and a powerful way and a really visible in the rallies. I think they speak to things you talk about in your book as well. I was thinking about the timing, during the covid crisis when trump basically had to give up the rallies and he had to substitute them with the press briefings. So there was a point in which almost every weekday or including some weekends trump would go to the White House Briefing room, stand on the podium go ahead. There was this line like that trust briefing was the new route it wasnt. It was like he was trying for it but he had his crowd was skeptical journalists. Not the same thing. What inflates trump is thousands of people screaming for him. At a trump rally, there are so many things but they would be a moment of silence and a man, a grown man, burly guy will call out in the middle of that moment, i love you. And you can laugh about it but it speaks to the power that trump has and the love. I was in the parking lot. I spent i spent about 52 hours in the parking lot tailgating for the tupelo, mississippi, rally and at one point there was a guy, there was the crew setting up the fencing and everything and this guy in a pickup truck sort of 60 year old burly guy and a carhart suit sort of drove past and we, as super fans would been out there suffering in the cold and wind and rain, and we started talking to him and he said i would have believed this if i have not heard it with my own ears. He said i love trump so much, i would walk behind you and pick up his proof. And again, we laugh his poop. There are tens of millions of people who feel that way about trump, and he speaks to them and he articulates their distress. Lets pick up on that for a second, because when i was reading the book and then hearing, reading about these perspective and their points of view i feel like theres certain threads that were tying a lot of these people together. So, for example, on conspiracy theories come the president just this week, the dark forces he says arkansas in the streets, the president embrace of conspiracy theories is welldocumented but i think, i felt like there was a mere image of this conspiracy theories with his followers, the people you are with at these trump rallies. Is that the tie that binds . Is that one of the main things that draws, that maintains that connection between a follower and the leader . I think i should say, as i said about tupelo, the sort of basis of a book is that i kind of joined the super fans and that ended up hanging out about 170 hours in parking lots and with these guys here i was the sixth and in light in tupelo ad then from then on i was buddies with these people, with rick snowden who has been at more trump rallies than anyone else in history of the world. And i in pennsylvania is his 68th rally. Use first in line or i think second in line with rick frazier was first, his 23rd rally. Once i sort of joined these guys, they texted me and we say my placement line, i would save theirs. Thats what i did. Thats all this came about. I think, the thing is that people dont read the news. I mean, i dont know what its hard to pin point chicken and egg, people live in this the sum total of my book is upside down world and people live in this, you know, in a bubble, and this upside down world through which everything is a Conspiracy Theory and then dont read the news and they say to you, if you say where do you get your news . They say they do their own investigation, their own research. This is the worst thing in the world because that means theyre getting all their news from social media, facebook and twitter, and not reading, a lot of people dont even watch fox news, or the watch one American News now somewhat and they live in this world in which everything is a conspiracy. Your image of a, trump is mirroring them and they are mirroring him but theyre all in the same upside down world. And its like that literally and a culturally. At a trump rally theres wild music playing, rock n roll, not sappy country music. The biggest song, the song that gets people just going the wildest is the village peoples ymca. In mississippi 3000 evangelicals and by before mike pence comes out literally ymca and people singing and then the next person comes out is mike pence who is adamantly, who says being gay is a sin. Thats this world and its always reinforcing itself. I think it speaks to what were going to talk about in your book where you talk about this post policy world where policy itself doesnt, there is no policy. Its all a show and i would say to you, is this an outgrowth . Is this, is trump a natural outgrowth of this sort of post policy world in which there is no reality, its only show . One to things i want to ask you about was the notion of how do the attendees of the events, how does this hardcore Bass Response to trumps failures, policy failures . Things like coronavirus and other things. My assumption before i was reading a book, they would emphasize or reprioritize or somehow rationalize and say the democrats fault for the medias fault or whomever. After reading the book its almost as if they are not even aware of his failures. Its not almost as if they are unaware of the failures. They dont think there are failures and they think, what trump says his ukraine call is that it was a perfect call and thats what he said over adenopathy talks about now at rallies but in those days, during the impeachment days, its just every easy example. Its a perfect call and people think its a perfect call and they think that, okay, back up a minute. There is a jumbotron, a giant screen that is set up outside in the parking lot of the rallies, and it goes up about, because of the day before but goes on rent seminar 7 30 a. M. On the date of the rally and its on an hourlong loop and it goes and goes and goes. All kinds, all the trump things are said there, but there was this one thing, when big clear word that stood out to me which was ripe Brad Parscale use vies Campaign Manager saying the biggest threat to american democracy is the fake news. That is hammered home over and over and over again. We see it in like him saying it or something and put in a newspaper but trumps base who number in the tens of millions believe that the Washington Post and New York Times makeup of the news. That it is fake news and its not true and that trumps called was perfect and trumps response to coronavirus is great and competent, and that everything trump does is amazing. Thats what they think. Its one thing to know that in abstract, as instruction, he said it is fake news and deleting because he said. Its nothing to get him to read your book and get into the weeds of their prospective and how its just compass a bubble that seems impossible to permeate. If a journalist wanted to talk to those attendees, whats true, i think effectively would be literally impossible, right . Yes. I mean, you cant come you cant argue with the Conspiracy Theory. I thought going into this that i would be having these long substantive conversations with people who were my, hang out with them for long periods of time, we would be able to have several, interesting conversations about the merits of Big Government or small government in the most basic sense. That was proved to be impossible. I couldnt do that. You cant have a conversation with somebody who believes that Michelle Obama has or Hillary Clinton met this woman in dallas, texas, and i liked her. She seemed very normal and she had traveled and worked, traveled to india and she seemed like a sophisticated person and i said to her, the one thing that really gets me is the conspiracy theories. I said, i dont know what to do with it. She said, she goes, i dont have 99 friends commit suicide, did you . And i was like, wait a minute what are you saying . Then i realized she was talking like the clintons and hillary i guess, the clintons murdered all these people. She said to me, well, i believe hillary would kill to win, absolutely. And that is not fringe. That is a constant and it goes deep with everyone in the base. I hate to say it but its true. Its a literal fantasy world. One of the other threads in addition to conspiracy theories was an issue of race. I wont read from the book but on page 181 you tell this great come fast eddie anecdote about his farmer, the peak on farmer. He said some pretty disgusting things. Would be insulting and offensive and leading a bad taste in your mouth as you read it, and it got me thinking a lot about whether they consider themselves racist, whether come to be considered trump a racist is it trumps racism that helps you will their affinity for the or do they just consider themselves above such ugliness . Racism and religion are huge parts racism, religion our ideas of masculinity i think are the most sort of powerful cultural threads, and racism is everywhere. It permeates everything. I trump rally its all white. The first thing a person will say to you is i know a lot of nice people and i hung out with a lot of people who were very kind to me, and if you talk to them the first thing they say is they say everybody accuses us of being a racist. Im not a racist. No, we are not racists. And what they mean by that is sort of a kkk racist, a night writer or something. But the idea of systemic racism they just are not even aware of. The rally is 22,000 people and there might be 200 black people there, and the campaign will gather them together and put tshirts on them, blacks for trump and set them behind the te president so the cameras can see them. Everything is a race. Everything is code. Everything is, you know, driving this wedge of xenophobia and racism, and they are sort of they dont admit at the dont want to say at the dont want to confront it. They dont believe they are racist. They will say well, why should i be held liable for something that happened 200 years ago . Its a crazy world, but lets talk a little bit about the impostors because i mean thats a perfect segue. Theres a line in your book that says is there no true, how did we discuss and make decisions rooted in fact . I think thats kind of where, theres so many places but where these books will he come together, talk about that a little bit. Its true. One of the things a document in the book are series of conversations that barack obama would have at the white house with Congressional Republicans on any number of issues. Obama would try and appeal to their intellect and say im going to present you with the data and evidence and roll out testimonials from the authorities, subject matter experts. The thinking was if he could just get through to republicans on an intellectual level, that from their you can go some kind of consensus, some kind of compromise and govern effectively. I i make a joke about him bringg facts to oppose policy fight. Really all the arguments went right over their heads. He was making arguments to them as if they were members of the governing party when there were not, these folks are talk about a group of people who consider the very idea of governing to be something not prepared to do. Their pundits and they the cart ideology and when elections but they are not interested in governing. In all likelihood they fit a pretty one of those rallies you attended because it helps me from reading your book about that the people for donald trump are part of post to the same problems. They are not necessarily consider whats the best way to solve problems. They are interested in glorifying division and advancing this partisan political agenda but all theyre interested in. At the convention, heres this whole you are saying the gop has abandoned substantive policy, and then has been having for a long time and then the convention is launched with no platform. Perfect moment. And speaking of that also segues into the idea of trump as the state. Right, exactly. The Republican Party starting in 1850s produced the first platform in 1856. Every four years since that thee had a policy agenda, theyve had it a superficial way about governing other produce a document that is scrutinized say heres the parties agenda and you can invite we get on the merits. Except in 2020 for the First Time Since 1856 he said no, we will not bother with that their only care about is glorifying trumpet whatever trump says thats our platform. If trump changes his mind, thats our new platform. I thought they were just going to rehash 2016 platform. This, this year they didnt even bother. I felt like in some respects they are proving my point, this is a party that doesnt care. You dont need a policy because trump is, whatever trump is an says, he is the policy, right . Excise array. If he changes his mind thats the policy. If he decides he doesnt care about governing, then the party doesnt care about governing and the fact it does appear in some respects i i felt like this wan embarrassment for the party or at least it shouldnt if theyre capable machine. This is the party that has a rich tradition of caring about ideas and caring about conservative solutions to problems. They just forfeited all of it. They lit the critical importance they were no longer going to pretend to be a governing party. I found it breathtaking. I love some of your stories about sort of your examples like a couple of them i loved example of herman cain saying he would about anything longer than three pages, that if he was elected president he would allow any law come i i understand, in a law r policy paper longer than three pages. That such an example of disdain of the complexity, expertise inherent in government. Exactly. Right. Thats a a classic example. He was saying he couldnt be bothered with complexity. If anything, im speaking in the context of say like a nasa scientist. If you and i were going to be working on a manual for the lunar module, three pages, thats it. Some things are complicated or Health Care Policy complicated. Immigration from economic policy, take time and involves people of goodwill rolling up their sleeves and digging in the weeds in caring about the substantive details. Herman cain was one of these folks and forcefully hes not in the party, late herman cain was saying none of that matters. We want something simple, something we can fit on a Bumper Sticker or in the tweet and thats it because the alternative is hard work. Were not interested in hard hae because that would require them to take governing seriously and they dont. Thats a classic example, im glad it resonate with you. Or recognizing theres something that there is this novel virus out there that can kill you and herman cain, i mean, i dont want to, you know, but he went to the rally and didnt wear a mask and he is no longer with us. Its just crazy. Its mindboggling. I also like the one about th