Have seen it coming. In theory i would like to start with what was my personal favorite moment in the book which is the first meeting between donald trump and steve bannon who would become a very influential political strategist in his world where he explains to trump that if hes thinking about running for president , he cannot do as a traditional republican. Can you describe the scene. Sure, thanks for having me, i was fascinated buy the book, it made no sense by this, one of the reasons you have to remember donald trump did not, as a bolt out of the blue, he had been speaking for years for running for president but he was not quite sure how he would really have an identity, sometimes he was a democrat, sometimes he was a republican, he flirted with the idea of running in ross perots at one point but in 2012 he was getting serious about it and david bossi, a conservative activist a hardline conservative activist was a friend of Donald Trumps and he decided to talk to him about running for president and they took his friend steve bannon who did not know donald trump up to a meeting at trump towers to talk about this if donald trump is going to run as an outsider, how would he do it, david bossi sat down with steve bannon and donald trump and says here is you run a traditional reagan republican which is kind of the way all republicans ran at that point. In steve bannon speaks up and says something different, he says thats not going to work anymore, if youre going to run you need to run as a populist and pat buchanan in ross perot and basically said there is a new populist mood in the country and donald trump looks at steve bannon and steve bannon tells a story and says thats what i am, im a popular wrist, not a populist popular wrist, he got the knowledge he mingle, but hes right, if hes going to run hes going to take populism maka popular make it all about him and then he doesnt decide to run in 2012 but four years later that is exactly what he does. In the meantime between 2012 and 2016 he actually starts holding the populist message, i think theres a lot of starting point for the trump revolution, that is one of the more intriguing ones. Its really a from the very beginning that trump has been all about the writing testament. Very much so, i interviewed knew greek georgNewt Gingrich, g in the. Of the book tells us the 40 year period of the conservative revolution from Ronald Reagan in 1979 when he starts to run for president to Donald Trumps arrival of where we are today and Newt Gingrich has a lot of insight of the hole. One of the things he said to me is that donald trump is not a conservative, hes an antiliberal, he takes a lot of liberals speaking is nonsense but he does have a philosophy or read the National Review which is the bible of modernday conservatism, hes in instinct player, it is about him and thats all fine with his supporters, that is one of the things that we learned in 2016 you dont have to be a traditional conservative, you dont have to have an ideology, which are against at this point in our political history isnt as important as what youre for. One thing that makes its really different from so many other political books is there is also an autobiographical thread that goes through, even the title you should have seen it coming as a firstperson world, how did you come up with this title and what were you attempting to do at this. That is interesting, it was not my plan, youre a journalist, im a journalist, to think about something in the first person is exceptionally uncomfortable, thats not what i intended, but when i got into this project it was an attempt to explain where the donald trump come from, i got very interested in the starting point, the starting point i decided was 1979 with the carter presidency collapses, carter gives them a speech and throws up his hands and says were in terrible trouble, the country has been prepared to turn to Ronald Reagan who wins the presidency in 1980 and that began a four decade. Of conservative influence in the countrys political, the conservative movement was through the 40 year. The most interesting and perhaps the most powerful Political Movement of the time, i decided that that was the story i was going to tell in which a story and how the conservative Movement Rose to providence and power under Ronald Reagan is somehow involved to picking donald trump to be the standard bearer by 2016. When i talked with my editor at random house about it, he said that is the arc of your career, it is true, i arrived in washington to cover washington for the wall street journal in 1980, in the spring of 1980 and then ive been following the story ever since and he said that you should put yourself in the book, you witnessed a lot of this that youre going to write about, you should tell us what it was like to be there so thats how that came about, it was not my idea but once i accepted the idea it did seemed like a good way to insert myself occasionally in the story by saying i sell this convention, heres what it felt like or i interviewed bill clinton at that point and this is what it sounded like, i hope its not too intrusive, i hope it humanizes the story a little bit but as i said is not a natural or comfortabl comfortable placer journalists to land. With talk about 1980, Ronald Reagan represented a lot of things, he did represent very traditional conservative principles, free trade, smaller government, stronger military, he was in some ways an internationalist buddy also comes along with an optimistic upbeat view of the world and something that the country after jimmy carter in the period that you write about, the malaise. Shot of selfconfidence that the country really needs at that moment. People forget, i certainly remember because it was one of the formative memories of my political memories, in 1949 they said the presidency is too great of job for any one person to handle maybe we need to split into and have it invested policy uniform policy, thats how the Carter White House was at that point. Youre right Ronald Reagan walked through the door and he said explicitly, this is nonsense, this is america, we can do this, lets pull herself together and move forward, that was the attitude. The philosophy was, with conservative, it was 19764 years earlier Ronald Reagan tried to take the nomination away from gerald florida in the Republican Party and the probabl country dd hes too conservative, that is too far out there, but in 1980 Ronald Reagan hadnt moved but the country was ready for, as much to do with carters failure as reagan success, there you have it. What really happened in 1980 that i did not appreciate until he did the book was Ronald Reagan took a basic core message that he had developed for years and expanded and flushed it out. How does that happen, first of all his economic philosophy became a little clear because he took supplies from economics from jack kemp and said im not for balancing the budget, and for a big tax cut that will spur the economy, yet a conservative message that had a little more own to it, and then he reunited with religious conservatives, that did not happen that was a revolution the idea that people in them angelical movement would get out of the churches into the Political Movement, that had not happened before certainly on the scale and Ronald Reagan went to them and they came to Ronald Reagan and they linked bonds and that was the second leg, yet economic conservatives and social religious conservatives and then he made common cause with the neoconservatives, the hawkish democrats in foreignpolicy who are very antisoviet, much called warriors and he dumped them into the coalition and that is where the anticommunism that held this group together for so many years kinda provided the glue that kept it all together. And what Ronald Reagan did was put all those three elements together and created a coalition and suddenly there was not just the conservative message, there was a fully formed conservative platform and thats what reagan brought to the table in 1980. Also it isnt entirely clear that at the beginning it is going to succeed, he gets through the massive tax cuts, his Economic Program but then the next thing it happens, he gets hit by a big recession and they have to pull back and some of the economic policies. Thats a good point and its all forgotten, the mythology of reagan, he cut taxes and everything came back to life, that was not true at all, the giant tax cut in 1981 in this first year in office and thats exactly what he asked for it was considered dangerous and revolutionary and it did not work right away, the deficit exploded, republicans were crazy nervous as what it happened, the recession continued, the economy was going down, this is like it might be for a while a colossal failure and in fact so much so that in 1982 republicans, more conventional conservatives led by among others, bob dylan, robert baker pushed through congress a tax bill that took back the tax because they were so worried about the deficits that were opening up and then eventually the combination of deficit spending frankly because the government had been cut much and the tax cuts finally kicked in and by 1982 things started to kickoff but there was that. In which this might be as howard baker refrigerant that wasnt going to work, i read that that wouldve gone bust, it was not an a success by any structure of the imagination. You also write about at this time there was a scaffolding and infrastructure being built so that reaganism would outlast reagan, can you talk a little bit about that in those who were traveling with him on this road and the establishment of think tanks and outside organizations. This again when you do a book you get the chance to look through the Rearview Mirror and things are suddenly clear that way then looking at the front windshield, this is one of the things that i did not appreciate at the time, i looked through it but it happened so incrementally that i did not grasp it when you go back and look, you realize whatd the things that happened in the first reagan term and particularly all through the reagan years was the construction of a conservative infrastructure that could support the reagan revolution, it did not exist, liberals had an infrastructure, think tanks and networks of supporters and money organization, activist, all through the new deal era and beyond the supported what they were doing, conservatives did not have that they created that and it took various forms, the form of americans for tax reform, new organization created at the Reagan White House which wanted a group out there in society somewhere to support our taxcutting regimen and to lend some firepower for outside to support what were doing, that gets created, you have a go pack which is a sleepy Little Organization that tried to recruit republicans that ran for state legislators, Newt Gingrich takes it over and puts it on steroids and all of a sudden you have a giant nationwide farm team of republicans and conservatives being developed at state level offices, governorships and house races, theyre all being fueled by Newt Gingrichs idea. Can i interrupt, describe the technology by which they are doing this because i have thought long thought that the happiest coincidence on Newt Gingrich entire political career was the fact that he and the cspan cameras arrived on the House Chamber at practically the same moment, he is spreading his message through cspan but to talk a little bit about the tapes. Newt gingrich used to technologies of the time that were cuttingedge in seem ridiculous now, one of them, you say cspan cameras, he figured out if you showed up Late Afternoon on the floor of the house the cameras were on and cspan was showing what was happening to the country but there was nothing happening, you step in and fill regular order speeches and you start to basically spread the gospel because you havent made platform that is available, he does that but he also uses cassette tapes which seems ridiculous now, he figured out that there was all these republican wannabes who wanted to be conservative soldiers but they needed instruction and talking point and they needed practical advice so he figures out the way i can do this all make cassette tape recordings of things republican should say, due in no heavy wonder bread has conservatives and he sends them out by the thousands across the country to grassroots, young republican politicians who are meant to take the cassette tapes, put them in their cars when theyre going from event to event and listen to them and their basically getting howto instructions in indoctrination from Newt Gingrich as they go through their days on the campaign trail and this turns a whole generation of young republican conservatives into Newt Gingrich republican conservatives who are basically playing by the same playbook. So he says all of those things and at the same time the nra becomes a more Political Organization field on by a Democrat John dingell who is an outdoorsman very much guns right kind of democrat who basically convinces the nra they should defend gun rights not just talk about outdoor conservation and hunting and fishing, that happens in crucially the other organization that gets created was a federal society which was a completely novel idea, an organization of conservative legalist lawyers and law professors which is created to extend and spread the conservative legal gospel but then it turns out its an organization that is readymade to recruit federal conservative judges, so the federal society is created during this incubator. In a start to recommend people and promote conservatives who are nominated to be judges, federal and state judges and now where we live today the federal society is the most important for pushing conservative judges onto federal benches and the Supreme Court in all of washington basically running that part of the operation for the Trump White House and for Mitch Mcconnell the republican leader in the senate and all that started during the reagan years. Then you have a funny story of the creation of the Heritage Foundation and essentially in the office. This again are things that were going on right under your nose that you did not know at the time, there was a sense early on, just before the reagan years in the late 70s some people had a sense they needed to be a conservative machine to counter the liberal machine and one of the people who is interested in doing this was joseph the coors beer out colorado, very conservative and interesting to how to assert himself, he sends a letter to the colorado senator saying im going to come to town and i would like to talk about how to spend money to spread the conservative gospel. And he has in mind probably give it a big check to the American Enterprise institute which was the one notable conservative think tank the time. This letter is intercepted and ed full nerve among a couple of other people is aware of this and he basically hijacks and arranges to meet with joseph so then they got a better idea, we should have a very aggressive small conservative think tank in washington, that doesnt just put out white papers that people read and put on their shelf but thats out there creating action, so he arranges to have a meeting with joseph coors to talk about this idea but full nerve is a smart guy he realized that this will have more impact if it does not happen in a restaurant in a hotel in Downtown Washington but if it happens in the white house where Richard Nixon was still in office at the time in lynn who was a likeminded conservative from california was working in the white house, they arrange for this meeting to be held in his office in the Old Executive Office building to impress joseph coors and they walk into the meeting and joseph courses these guys think i should give the money to start a new conservative think tank but i think theres anyone in town called the market enterprise, why dont i just give them my money and they arrange this ahead of time, he walks over to his bookshelf in the Old Executive Office and pulls off the shelf and aei study, he blows dust off of it which is put on the study to show its been sitting on my shelf gathering dust for many weeks and he blows it off and says this is what we do with studies they go on the bookshelf and gather dust, you should give money to these guys, so joseph coors cut the check to ed folder he goes to capitol hill and the Heritage Foundation is born, it gets its name because one of the partners is walking through his neighborhood in Fairfax County virginia and suburban washington and he sees a group of Housing Division called the Heritage Homes he said thatll be a nice team so they called it the Heritage Foundation and the rest is history, its a giant multimillion dollar a year conservative think tank, has a reagan agenda and still active today and again, had it sees in this. When conservatives thought they had the book up if you will. Another thing that you see happen over the 1980s in the late 1980s going into the 90s is that the language of politics begins to shift and becomes a much rou