Book row dwindled until after next three years this grant is the sole survivor now run by thirdgeneration owners. I want to thank all of you for your support. Without oil demand booklovers and authors like carl and steve we wouldnt be here today. So tonight rex had to with us carl hoffman and steve benen for a double book club. Carl is a former contribute editor at wired and National Geographic traveler and is travel on assignment to 80 countries. Picky set author of five books, savage harvest was in your times editors choice, New York Times bestseller, the Washington Post notable book of the year come has been translated into nine languages. The last wild man was a finalist for the Book Competition and edgar award. Lunatic express was named one of the ten best books of the year by the wall street journal. Tonight marks the launch of its latest book, liars circle a strange and terrifying journey into the upsidedown world of trumps maga rallies. Stephen is produced on the Rachel Maddow show, and author of the maddow blog. His articles and updates have appeared in the New York Times, washington monthly, the american prospect, salon. Com and other publications. For its work on the Rachel Maddow show his receipt to make in the awards and has been nominated for three more. Tonight is in it for his new book the imposters. So without further ado please join the marketing steve and carl to the stage. Thank you. I appreciate that. Its great to be. I think this strain for inviting us. Carl, congratulations on a lunch of the book. I i had a chance to read last wk and it coincided with Republican National convention which make for an interesting evening. Watching the convention in reading your book at the same time. One of the things i saw at the convention that i thought dovetailed well with the book was the republicans were acting as if trump was basically the country, that there was no distinction that whats good for the niceties and what is good for the president. If you dont support trump, you are antiamerican. You know, youre a loser. You are either a winner or a loser in trumps world. 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 was struck by something i think we saw at the convention this last week, which was just come to surprise me. This idea that trump appeared hes a big man physically, but he appeared big. Is up there on the stage and hes incredibly selfconfident and he looks strong in the kind of sort of third world strongman way, and he grows. The crowd is there, this wild crowd, mom, thats 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 hear about these things but to really see it, and im not on his team that but yet i felt that power. I think over the last three months or so, for five months now in overtime, trump has been on the ropes and hes been in the background. He hasnt had that screaming mob. Hes like a balloon with a big hole in it, lets face it, in that he needs that crowd, the screening people or the error that conflates them, makes an big. Suddenly saw at the convention this sort of reinstallation especially like the last night. So he gets a big, and to his followers, he is the state, for sure. This classic sort of authoritarian rightwing populism. If you oppose him you are a traitor. So all those things come into play in a powerful way and a really visible in the rallies. I think they speak to things tu 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 tried to substitute then with the press briefings. There was a point in which almost every weekday or including some weekends trump would go to the Briefing Room comstat behind the podium go ahead. People, there was this line, like the press briefing was the new rally. It really 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 there 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 52 hours in the parking lot tailgating for the tupelo, mississippi, rally. At one point there was a guy, a crew setting up the fencing everything and this guy in the pickup truck, 60yearold burly guy in a carhart suit sort of drove past and we, us super fancy been out there, suffering in the cold and the win and the rain and we Start Talking to him and he said i wouldnt have believed this if id not heard it with my own ears. He said i love trump so much, i would walk behind in and pick up his poop. We laugh at that, but thats serious here are tens of millions of people who feel that way about trump, and he speaks to them and he articulates, he articulates their distress. Lets pick up on that because when i was reading the book and im hearing and reading about these perspectives and their points of view i feel like there are certain threads that were tied a lot of these people together. For example, conspiracy theories. Theories. The president just this week the dark forces he said are controlling the streets. The president s abrasive conspiracy theories is welldocumented but i think, i felt like there is a mirror image of those conspiracy theories with his followers, the people youre with the rallies. Do you think, is that the tie that binds . Is that one of the main things that draws, but maintains that connection between a follower and the leader . I think i should say, as i said about tupelo, the basis of my book is that i kind of joined the super fans and it ended up hanging out about 170 hours in parking lots with these guys. I was the sixth in line at tupelo, and from then on i was by these with these people. You know, with rick snowden has been more trump rows than anyone in history of the world. Tonight in pennsylvania it is his 68th rally. He was the first in line i think he was second in line with rick frazer who was first, his 23rd rally. Once once i joined these guys, they texted me and save my place in line, i would save theirs. Thats what i i did and thatsl this came about. The thing is that people dont read the news. I mean, i dont know what its hard to pin point chicken and egg, but people live in the subtitle a book is upside down world, and people live in this, you know, in a bubble, in this upside down world in which everything is a Conspiracy Theory and they dont read the news, and they say to you if you say how, where you get your news . They say they do their own investigation, your own research, which is the worst thing in the world because that means theyre getting all the news from social media, facebook, twitter, and a lot of people dont even watch fox news, weather 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. I mean, and its like that literally and culturally. At a trump rally theres wild music playing, rock n roll, not sappy country music. The biggest song, the song tht gets people going the wildest is the village peoples ymca. Mississippi where there would be thousands of evangelicals, and right before mike pence comes out, literally ymca, people pantomiming the words ymca, ad 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. And 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 think i would say to you, is this an outgrowth, is trump a natural outgrowth of this sort of post policy world in which there is no reality, only show . Right. One of the things i want to ask you about is this notion of how do attendees of events, how does this hardcore base come how do they respond to trump standards . Failed in government, and one of other things. My assumption before reading your book that they would deemphasize or reprioritize what it would somehow rationalize and say its the democrats fault or the media fault or whoever. After reading the book into and from what youre saying that some associate theyre not even aware of the failures. Its not almost as if theyre unaware of the failures. They dont think there are failures and they think, i mean, what trump says about his ukraine call is that it was a perfect call and thats what he says over, i dont know if he talks about it now at rallies but in those days, during the impeachment days, just a great example, its a protocol and people think its a perfect call. They think okay, back up a minute. Theres a jumbotron, a giant screen that is set up outside in the parking lot of the rallies. It goes up about, it goes up the day before buddha goes on around seven or 7 30 in the morning of the date of the rally and its on an hourlong loop and it goes and goes and goes. All kinds of all the trump things are said but it was one thing, when big clue word that stood out to me which was Brad Parscale used to be the 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 quoted in a newspaper, but trumps base numbers in the tens of millions believe that the Washington Post, the New York Times make up the news, that it is fake news and its not true, and that trumps call was perfect and trumps response to the coronavirus was great and competent, and that you know, everything trump does is amazing. Thats what they think. Its one thing to know that in abstract, as a distraction. He says its fake news ended with him because he it. Its another thing to read your book and get into the weeds of their perspective. Its just, at the bubble that seems like its impossible to permeate. At the journalist wants to convey to those attendees whats true, i think thats effectively literally impossible, right . Yes. 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, in hanging out with them for long periods of time. Would be able to have civil, interesting conversations about the merits of a government or small government in the most a sick 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 has, i met this woman in dallas, texas, and i liked her. She seemed very normal and she traveled and worked, travel to india and she seemed like a sophisticated person. I said to her, one thing that really gets me is those conspiracy theories. Im like, i dont know what to do with that. She goes, well, i dont have 99 friends who have committed suicide, do you ask and i was like, wait a minute what are you saying . Then i realize shes talking about 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. That is not fringe. That is a constant, and it goes deep with everyone in the base, and i hate to say it but its true. Its a literal fantasy world. One of the other threads is, they came through to me was the issue of race. I wont read from the book but on page 181 you tell a fascinating anecdote about this farmer, apec on farmer. He he said some pretty disgustig things for anyone reading would be inherently insulted and it got me thinking about whether they consider themselves racist, do they consider trump a racist . Is it trumps racism that helps fuel their affinity for the order they just consider themselves above such ugliness . Racism and religion are huge parts racism, religion our ideas of masculinity i think of the most sort of powerful cultural threads, and racism is everywhere to get permeates everything. I trump rally is all white. The first thing the person will say to you is, i met a lot of nice people and hung out with a lot of people who were very kind to me. If you talk to them the first thing they say is anybody accuses us of being a. Im not a racist. No, we are not racists. And what they mean by that is sort of a kkk racist, somebody was run, at night rider 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. The campaign will gather them together and put tshirts on them, blacks for trump, and sit and guide the president so the cameras can see them. Everything is a race. Everything is code. Everything is, you know, driving this wage of xenophobia and racism, and they are sort of they dont admit it and they dont want to say it and they dont want to confront it. They dont believe they are racist. They will say why should i be held liable for something that happened to underage years ago . You know, its a crazy world. But lets talk a little bit aboi mean, the imposters. Thats a perfect segue. There is a line in your book that says if theres no truth, how do we discuss and make decisions . I think thats kind of where, well, there are so many places, where these books will he come together. Talk about that a little bit. Its true. I one of the things i die cut in the book is a series of conversations barack obama would have the white house with Congressional Republican leaders on any number of issues. Obama would try and appeal to their intellect and say im going to present you with data and evidence and im going to roll out testimonials from the authorities, experts. The thinking was easy to just get through to republicans on an intellectual level, on a substantive level, that from there you can build some kind of consensus or work out a compromise and govern effectively. But but i make a joke about him bringing facts to of policy fight. Really all those arguments went right over their heads. He was making arguments to them as it remembers of a governing party when they were not. We talk about a group of people who consider the very idea of governing to be unnecessary and something are not prepared to do anyway. They are pundits and they care about ideology and winning elections but they are not interested in governing. I think in all likelihood they do pretty well at the rallies because it sounds to me like from reading a book about the people for trump are part and parcel to the same problem, theyre not necessarily concerned about whats the best way to solve problems. They are interested in glorifying their leader and advancing his partisan political agenda but thats all theyre interested in. At the convention we hear this whole you are saying the gop has abandoned substantive policy, then thats been happening for a long time, and then the convention is launched with no platform. That fits speaking of, that segues into the idea of trump as exactly. The Republican Party started in the 1850s produced the fruit platform in 1856. Every four every four years since then theyve had a policy agenda. They have a superficial way about government and to produce the document that republicans can read and scrutinizing hears of the agenda, you can evaluated on its merits. Except in 2020 for the First Time Since 1856 they said no, we are not going to bother with that. All we care about is glorifying trumpet whatever trump says is, thats our platform. If he changes his mind thats a new platform. I thought they would rehash 2016 platform. This year they didnt even bother and i nearly fell like in some respects they are proving my point. You dont really need a policy because trump is, whatever trump is an says, ease the policy, right . Exactly right. If he changes his mind, thats the policy. And if he decides he doesnt care about governing, then the party doesnt care about governing. In fact, it doesnt. In some respects i thought this was an embarrassment to the Party Organization within. Think about it, this is a party that has this rich tradition of caring about ideas and caring about conservative solutions to problems and they just forfeited all of it. They light the critical on fire and say we will not pretend to be a governing party anymore. I love some of your stories about, sorted your examples. I loved the example of herman cain saying he would allow anything longer than three pages, that if he was elected president he would allow any law, my interest in, in the coy of all or some policy paper longer than three pages, and that such an example of such disdain of the complexity, expertise inherent in governmen government. Right. He was saying that he couldnt be bothered with complexities. Like if anything, i was thinking that 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. Healthcare policy is complicated. Immigration, these things take time and get it involves people of goodwill rolling up their sleeves and dig into the weeds and caring about the details are herman cain was one of these folks, the late herman cain, we saying none of that matters. We want something simple, something we can fit on a Bumper Sticker or on a tweet and thats it. The alternative is hard work. Were not interested in hard work because that would require them to take governing seriously, if they dont. Thats a classic example. Im glad that resonated with you. Or recognizing that there is this novel virus out there that could 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 the june 2017 fake signing ceremony about privatizing air traffic control. Is funny, signing ceremony or normal part of governing in a normal administration. Congress passes a bill of significance, the president lines of the pins and they sign the signature and hand them out. Its a think of something president joey doing. The lasso for years that hasnt been in a legislative fake news in large part because republicans are so indifferent towards governing such oil trus to m