Tim Miller on Donald Trump, Elise Stefanik, and the Republicans who pretend being MAGA – Vox.com

One of the many things weve learned in the Trump era is that a lot of the people in positions of power are either cynics or nihilists or both.

This is true on both sides of the political aisle, but its especially true on the right at the moment. Thats not a partisan statement, even if it may sound like one. The reality is that ever since Donald Trump took over the party in 2016, there are many people working in Republican politics who dont believe in what theyre doing, who know that Trump is and was a dangerous figure, and yet theyve plowed ahead anyway.

The question is: Why?

A new book by Tim Miller called Why We Did It gives about as good an answer as youll find. Miller is a former political operative who worked at various levels of Republican politics since he was 16 years old. He broke ranks with the party when Trump won the nomination and his book is a genuine attempt to grapple with his own contradictions and make sense of the people he left behind. The result is an unusually insightful glimpse behind the curtain. Thats why I invited Miller to talk about his book on the latest episode of Vox Conversations.

Below is an excerpt, edited for length and clarity. As always, theres much more in the full podcast, so listen and follow Vox Conversations on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Your journey in Republican politics is the core of the book and I just wanna start there. You started working in Republican politics when you were 16. Were you just a political junkie that early in your life?

Total political junkie. I dont know why, my parents werent. My grandmother was really into Republican politics, and so we would talk about politics and we gambled on the 1992 presidential race. I took Bill Clinton. She took George H.W. Bush. She had to mail me $1 with my winnings, which I was extremely proud of in fifth grade. And that was the last time I supported a Democrat until Hillary Clinton in 2016. So, you know, I kind of went full circle there.

The Republican Party has changed a lot since you were 16. But for reasons youve suggested it was always an awkward home for you. Youre gay, and you talk about how easily you contorted yourself to defend homophobes for years.

You call it championship-level compartmentalization in the book. That sounds like a really difficult pose to maintain for so many years.

Actually not really. It wasnt that difficult and thats the thing that makes it so gross. It makes me feel so bad about it.

I think that its important for me to explain that because if I could work for homophobes, when the people that I was working for were literally trying to use the law to deny me the things that are the most important things in my life right now my husband, my child well, then, think about how easy it is for somebody to justify working for Donald Trump when none of the impacts of his policies hurt them.

Like, they arent kids on the border. Theyre not gonna be the ones that are punished by the new abortion laws. So thats why I tried to make this parallel and try to make you really understand my mindset.

What was your eureka moment? When did you finally realize that you had had enough, that this whole thing had gone too far and you werent a Republican anymore?

I fucking knew it with [Sarah] Palin. I knew it.

And this is why the first half of the book is me in a hair shirt. I come to these interviews and they are like, Why is it Why We Did It? You opposed Trump from Day One. Which I did.

But its Why We Did It because I sat there for seven years as this beast kind of grew and grew and became more and more dangerous. And I knew it.

I leave the McCain campaign, I move to DC, I come out of the closet, and Im working for a PR firm. I still can see whats happening clearly. I was like, the crazies are taking this over. John McCain is a good man whos trying to manage the crazy and making some good choices, some bad choices while he does that. But the power, the energy is with the reactionaries. And I saw it then, and yet I still just keep getting sucked back in.

And the first way I get sucked back in is kind of earnest, actually I go to work for Jon Huntsman and Im like, I kind of know this guys gonna lose, but Im a moderate Republican, and Im gonna go work for this moderate. But I get addicted to the competition of it again, and then kind of slowly start going down the path to working for more and more gross people.

The second half of the book is really about actors behind the scenes in the Republican Party, the functionaries, the spin doctors, the campaign hacks. These are the people who often know what theyre doing, often know they shouldnt do it, and just do it anyway. And the reasons they do it are as banal as they are depressing.

One thing that comes across is that it really is a game for a lot of these people. And if you really push them on it, what you find is that theres no real moral core behind it. Its just careerist, jockeying for influence and attention.

Its really depressing. The characters in the book, almost all of them, with one or two exceptions, in the second half about the Trump era, go along with it anyway.

So the question is, why? This is gross in a different way, but you almost want it to be because theyve really bought the bullshit about how we need to have a secure border to help wages. Or they just are so hard line on protecting fetuses or so hard line on whatever.

And some of those people exist in real America. But in the DC class? None of em, and that includes the named people in the book. I also interviewed a bunch of people I didnt name and nobody nobody got passionate talking about any policy issue. Thats all a feint, its all bullshit.

The only time I would sense any emotion in their voice when they were explaining why they went along with Trump, besides the banal careerist reasons, was that theyve really started to really not like you, Sean. I mean, not you, but, like, your people, right? The liberal media elites theyve developed a very deep well of hatred and resentment and jealousy of them.

Of all the characters in the book, all the operator types, some of them you know personally, some of them you dont which of them sticks out to you the most in terms of just like abject nihilism or cynicism?

Its Elise for me. Elise Stefanik.

Can you say who she is?

Yeah, sure.

So just going all the way back, I worked with her on the Republican autopsy. People might remember, after Mitt Romney lost, we put together this document that basically had a bunch of blocking and tackling recommendations for how the party can catch up to Obamas data nerds, but also said that we should soften our rhetoric around immigration and other issues.

Elise was the editor of that document. And I was the spokesperson at the time. So I was working with her very closely.

So Elise then runs for Congress as a very moderate Republican climate change is a problem, gay marriage, immigration reform. You know, as moderate of a Republican as you have in Congress when she wins in 2014. 2016, she runs for reelection with Trump on the ballot, wont say his name. Literally cant even spit out his name.

In 2018, something happens. Trump comes to campaign in her district, huge crowd. She gets this huge applause on the stage. She starts to reassess her power trajectory. Paul Ryan, who was kind of her mentor, retires. So her little path up through the normal establishment ranks in Congress started to seem not as likely.

And she flips on a dime. And in the first impeachment becomes Trumps most rabid defender with the most absurd defenses. She was like a foreign policy neocon Republican who wouldve been very much arm the Ukrainians against the Russians, flips on it, sides with Trump against Zelenskyy. And is now literally indistinguishable from a MAGA troll.

And there was no policy anything about this. I interviewed tons of mutual friends. She wouldnt talk to me. She emailed me saying that she sees my tweets and is not interested in participating in the book. And didnt reply to any other of my entreaties.

So to me, she is the worst because its just the most brazen. It also is the worst at some level because its paying off for her. I truly think shell be on a VP shortlist for Trump, cause hell want a woman if he runs in 2024. And if not that, I think shes on a speaker of the house trajectory.

Part of me is perversely fascinated by some of the people you talk to, the ones who really, truly hate the cultural left so much, so that they pretend that theres just two choices, right? Wokeness or fascism.

How common is that sentiment?

Its pretty common.

So in all those drunk off-the-record conversations, people kept bringing this up. Literally this was the thing that people were volunteering, these Republican staffers.

The formulation that you just laid out is not an exaggeration. [One source] said, My wifes friends think Im a racist. My kids are getting these DEI packets. Theres cancel culture everywhere. And as a white male, like, sometimes I feel like my only choice to combat the wokeness is to just think about the one or two things that I agree with Donald Trump on and ride with him.

Thats not the direct quote, cause I dont have it in front of me, but like thats very close to his direct quote.

Thats a common sentiment. Thats how they all soothe each other, by expressing something to that same effect, maybe not quite as brazen.

Thats why I dont have a last chapter in the book what do you do about this? What do you do about petty, privileged, white dudes resentments, and willingness to go along with Donald Trump over them?

I dont have a good answer to that question.

Who do you thinks actually steering the party now? Is it Fox News? Is it the base? I mean, the politicians themselves seem to be totally hostage to both of those things.

No, theyre totally hostage to the base. Look at Trump getting booed over the vaccine thing. I thought that was a very telling moment. It was like one time where he kind of had to back off his own he doesnt even get to talk about it, one of the one good things that happened while he was in there: Operation Warp Speed. He cant even talk about it without getting booed.

Im stealing this from my other Bulwark colleague, Sarah Longwell, credit where due. Its a triangle of doom. The bases grievances are underlying. Some of them are legitimate, by the way, others are illegitimate.

The conservative media is stoking the illegitimate grievances mostly. But occasionally theyre legitimate grievances about the hollowing out of certain parts of the country.

And then the Republican politicians are riding the wave of that grievance-mongering. And rather than caring at all about responsibilities of leadership or checks on excesses, have now just totally accepted it.

And so, all three are responsible and, somewhere along that, you have to break it. But where? Who? The politicians arent, like the conservative media isnt. Is the Republican base gonna get less radicalized? Thats kind of hard to see.

You say something I think very true and profound at the end of the book about politics and identity. And I just wanna read it aloud here.

You say, For gay people, coming out of the closet is hard because of this change of your identity. Its not only how you look at yourself, but how other people look at you. People you love, your dad, your high school bestie. Youre worried that theyre going to now see you differently because your identity is changed in their eyes. And so if politics becomes like skin color, like sexuality, untangling that is a lifetime of work. And its therapy. And we should really think about it like that.

This to me is absolutely one of the most challenging problems. These cultural divides have mapped neatly onto political divides. That means our political views are wrapped up with our core identity in really powerful ways. And that means people are entrenched. Theyre not reachable by facts or arguments or policies because thats not what identity is about.

And even some of the cynical careerists you write about in this book, you can see how their professional identities are bound up with their partisan politics. And the price of leaving that behind is enormous. And most arent willing to pay it. Its who they are now. Its their friends, its their whole lives.

I dont know what to do about that, Tim. But that seems like a chasm that may be unbridgeable.

Its something that Ive thought about a lot. The fact that I had to come out of the closet and had to experience that I think in some ways helped me be more comfortable with this, right?

And it ended up being the best thing I ever did in my life. It was the best choice I ever made. My life trajectory wouldve been horrible had I decided to, like, stay in the closet and marry the one girlfriend I ever had (sorry, Stephanie).

So I knew that I could do this. For these other folks, to your point the bars they go to. The poker night. The church. Their friend group. Their dogs name is Reagan. Changing all that is very challenging. So thats the DC class. And I think it explains it doesnt excuse, but it explains why its so hard.

Last week, I was with someone who works for Liz Cheney. And I was like, hows life? Hes like, I still get invited to parties, but I dont go. Because its really awkward.

So thats hard. Thats challenging for people.

That is also happening now out in America though. Which is something that is kind of relatively new and is not totally Trump era, but has gone on steroids in the Trump era which is the voters out there see themselves as Republican partisans, the same way like political operatives do.

And so their identity changing that is very hard, right? Thats why theres no quick fix to this.

But the one nice lesson I have is that, well, I showed and want to show no grace to the Republican collaborators who knew better in Washington. The actual people out in America who have gotten kind of sucked into this do need grace and time to be kind of pulled away from that identity.

Because its very hard and its entangled in there in a much deeper way than I think their voting identity was in the era where we grew up.

I live in Mississippi. I grew up here. I love it here. I love the people here and I felt the instinct more and more to defend my friends, from around the country, who want to shit on this part of the country.

But theres like a woman down the street, an older woman who has a giant ass flag in her yard that says Karens for Trump still, still! Like, thats not an affirmative statement about what she wants to see in the world or about tax policy, whatever. That is a giant middle finger to everyone on the other side.

There is sanity and decency underneath so much of that. But its now been swallowed by tribalistic bullshit. And it is very hard to engage in ways now that dont activate these defenses.

I dont have the answer for that.

Me neither, man. I wish I did.

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Tim Miller on Donald Trump, Elise Stefanik, and the Republicans who pretend being MAGA - Vox.com