Tim Alberta On His Terrific New Book: “American Carnage: On The Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump”

[Valin]

Hugh Hewitt Show

 

Audio

Transcript:

HH: Why am I playing Evita? Why? Well, if you’ve been paying attention this weekend, you know there’s a big story in the Guardian, in the United Kingdom. They got hold of Tim Alberta, chief political correspondent for Politico Magazine’s brand-new book, American Carnage: On The Front Lines Of The Republican Civil War And The Rise Of President Trump, and they broke the embargo on one of the, there are like a thousand stories in American Carnage. I’m going to talk to Tim Alberta about American Carnage for ten segments, because American Carnage is that good. And I’m making sure I honor the Luntz rule, which is to say the title of American Carnage at least seven times. Tim Alberta, good morning. How are you? How’s American Carnage going, even though it’s not supposed to be going already?

TA: Good morning, Hugh. Yeah, it’s not supposed to be going already, but you just, you brought a smile to my face by playing the Evita soundtrack there, so thank you very much for that.

HH: The headline in the Guardian, Trump Calls Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Evita in new book, American Carnage, which is your book. Let’s set the stage. When did you sit down with the President?

(Snip)

HH: But people, you know what’s so funny? People, the elites thought Trump boggled it. He didn’t. It connected with America. Nuclear is a big thing. It connected with America. Second thing, what I love about this book is the political history. Very few people understand that the Year 2005 was the annus horribilis for an American politician. No worse year than that year for George Bush. He lost the Social Security fight. He had Terry Schiavo on his hands as she died, and his, he flew back from Texas to sign the law that ended up in blowback. He had Hurricane Katrina. He had the disaster that was Harriet Miers’ nomination. It was the worst year. You cannot understand Trump, McCain, Romney, and all of it unless you go back to 2005, and you did. We’ve got two minutes, Tim. You must have taken a big gulp when you started American Carnage, because it’s not just one of these quickie books on Trump. It’s an exploration of American politics for two decades.

TA: No, and look, I didn’t want it to be, Hugh. It’s funny, because you and I, I think, joked about this at some point. I almost certainly left some money on the table when I took this book proposal to New York, you know, two years ago, a year and a half ago, because everybody I’d sit down with would say so, this is a Trump book, right? And I’d say no, not really. It’s, you know, it certainly revolves around Trump in a way, because he’s the president, and I’m trying to tell the story of how we got to this place. But you know, when you start talking about history, and trying to contextualize the rise of a president and how a party has transformed in such a short period of time, and how culture plays such a large role in this, you know, these people, their eyes sort of glaze over. And so it’s funny, because I’ll joke about this now with my agents, and with my editor at Harper Collins, who’s been terrific, Jonathan Jayo. And they’ll say yeah, you know, look, if you had just come in guns blazing and said hey, I’m going to have all this great newsy stuff about Trump and about other high-profile Republicans, you probably could have made a heck of a lot more money on the front end. But I really, honestly, did not envision writing any sort of a really splashy, kind of gossipy Michael Wolff style book. It’s just not what I wanted to do. I really do think it’s important that for my young kids and for your grandkids, Hugh, that when you know, 20, 30, 40 years from now when they’re reading this, that they can have a really detailed, full, contextualized understanding of how we got to this place.

(Snip)