0:01

I used a

0:04

hunting rifle for the first time in my life. I

0:06

took a shot, it hit me in the face, I ended

0:08

up in the emergency room. Oh my God. It

0:10

was incredibly embarrassing. The congressman laughed at me

0:12

and gave me whiskey even though it was only 7 in the morning. Great

0:15

times.

0:15

This is Ben Terras. He writes

0:18

about national politics for the Post's Style

0:20

section. And over the years, he's

0:23

gotten himself into some pretty

0:25

wild situations.

0:26

There was a speechwriter for Senator Rob Portman

0:29

named Brett Talley, who in addition

0:31

to being a speechwriter was also a horror

0:33

novelist and an amateur ghost hunter. And

0:36

so I went

0:37

ghost hunting with him in a cemetery near Georgetown.

0:40

Ben is known for taking a really unique

0:42

approach to writing about politics. He

0:44

has spent years covering the people he calls

0:47

the sideshow characters,

0:49

embedding with the Washington insiders who

0:51

aren't always household names, but are crucial

0:54

to understanding how politics works.

0:57

And then a reality

0:59

TV star became president. One

1:02

of the things that I found is that if you

1:04

have experience covering oddballs, when Donald

1:06

Trump became president, you kind of were an expert

1:08

in a way that most people in Washington were not. So

1:11

when all the weird characters became the most important people

1:13

in Washington, I actually had a pretty good read

1:16

on some of them.

1:16

Yeah. It's like when the

1:18

sideshow became the main attraction. Exactly. Yeah.

1:22

They're in center ring now.

1:24

When Trump left office, Ben wondered, what

1:27

happened to all those people? Did

1:29

Washington go back to the status quo? And

1:32

how does power work now? So

1:35

he looked into those questions and

1:37

wrote a book. I

1:40

think that it's pretty apparent to people

1:43

all over the country that politics

1:45

is broken right now. Not everybody

1:47

knows why. And I think that

1:50

this is a book that can help explain that

1:52

to people. This is sort of like

1:54

a hitchhiker's guide to current

1:57

day politics.

1:59

From the newsroom of The Washington Post,

2:02

this is Post Reports. I'm

2:04

Elahe Izadi. It's Monday,

2:06

June 5th. Today, I talk

2:09

with Ben about his new book out this week,

2:11

The Big Break. Ben tells

2:13

me about the people who let him into their lives,

2:16

including the gamblers, the party

2:18

animals, and the true believers

2:21

trying to win in Washington.

2:24

What is the biggest problem you've had?

2:28

So, Ben, you set out with this book

2:31

to see and examine this question. If

2:33

it did Donald Trump break

2:36

Washington, because he came in with this

2:38

promise, right, of drain

2:40

the swamp and upending

2:42

things, tell me about why

2:45

this was a question that was important

2:47

for you to explore.

2:49

Well, when Biden ran for president

2:52

and won the presidency, he kind of had this promise

2:54

that he was going to return things to normal. But

2:56

it just didn't seem like that was possible, right? After

2:58

the four years of the Donald Trump presidency,

3:01

the idea of normal felt impossible.

3:04

And so I wanted to kind of see what actually the

3:06

new normal looked like. And

3:08

it is not normal at all. There's

3:11

nothing really normal about Washington these days. And

3:13

so I thought it was important just to see what guardrails

3:15

remained, what new

3:17

tactics there were for being successful

3:20

in Washington, how people could

3:23

gain influence, how people could protect from

3:26

democracy crumbling or protect their own fortunes. It

3:28

just seemed like this kind of new time, almost

3:31

like a new frontier in Washington. And

3:33

all these people were there trying to make their fortune.

3:36

And it just felt like a really rich territory to explore.

3:38

So how did you go about answering this

3:40

question? Well, because I'm

3:42

not a

3:44

wonky political person by

3:47

trade or in my nature, the

3:50

only way I could really think about doing this was finding interesting

3:52

people. And so I

3:54

spent two years looking

3:57

for people who could both be...

3:59

captivating to me as a writer,

4:02

as a reader, as a reporter, but

4:05

also tell a bigger story about what's going

4:07

on. So finding somebody who

4:09

represents

4:10

a part of the Democratic Party and the

4:12

struggle for what they should be

4:15

post-Trump, or the people who are trying to figure out what the

4:17

Republican Party should be after Trump, or

4:19

the people who are just figuring out

4:21

how the city works and where

4:23

the levers of power are. Well, first

4:25

of all, I've read your book. It's

4:27

really entertaining. And I'm not someone who,

4:30

like, I actually don't like the term political

4:32

junkie, but I can't think of another way of putting it

4:34

in. Like, I'm not one of those people,

4:36

I think. But I just found myself so engrossed

4:39

in all of these people's stories. And what's

4:41

so fascinating to me is that you

4:44

essentially wrote a Trump book

4:46

without Donald Trump in it.

4:49

And it's about all of these other people

4:51

who emerged during and after his presidency.

4:54

So can you introduce some of them to me?

4:56

Who do we meet first in this book?

4:59

The first person that you meet in this book

5:01

is a guy named Sean McElwee. And

5:04

he is a Democratic pollster-ish.

5:07

He runs a polling organization, or he ran

5:09

a polling organization. Young, Democratic,

5:13

hotshot. Was in the press

5:15

a fair amount, but not a household name. Yeah,

5:17

like, I don't know this guy. Yeah. People in Washington

5:20

knew him. And the reason the people in Washington knew him is

5:22

because he made sure that people knew about

5:24

him. Welcome back

5:26

to Washington Journal. I'm joined now

5:28

by Sean McElwee of

5:31

Data for Progress. He's the co-founder. Joining us now,

5:33

Vyas Skype, is the executive director of Data

5:36

for Progress. Great to have you, Sean. Thanks

5:38

so much for being with us.

5:39

Thanks for having me. Yeah, of course, Sean. All

5:41

right, there have been so many people. And so he was getting big

5:44

jobs. He helped out on the John

5:46

Fetterman campaign. His polls

5:49

about Democratic policies and

5:51

possible legislation was getting tweeted out by the

5:54

White House a lot. What we do is

5:56

we actually take from the voter file. That

5:58

means we have a much better coverage. coverage in

6:00

terms of young voters, much better

6:02

coverage in terms of Latino voters.

6:06

And he also hosted these

6:09

semi-regular poker nights that

6:11

were always filled with the kind

6:13

of mid-tier democratic

6:16

operatives who were on the rise. Often

6:18

these people, you could look around at this table and be like, okay,

6:20

somebody here is going to be working a big

6:22

job in an administration someday, if not

6:24

tomorrow. Nobody was

6:26

a really good poker player. They probably bought in for $100 and

6:30

there'd be a lot of bluffing and a lot of money changing

6:34

hands. Sean was always

6:36

having the wildest swings of winning a lot

6:38

or losing a lot. But it was just kind of the

6:40

poker was almost beside the point. People would go there

6:43

as a way to just chitchat

6:45

about politics.

6:49

Sean was very quotable.

6:51

He would often say kind

6:53

of the most outlandish thing he could just to see if he could

6:55

get a rise out of people. That

6:57

one Christmas party I was at, he was up

6:59

on the roof bragging to

7:01

a group of guests about how he had a

7:03

daily calendar alert on his phone

7:06

that just said, don't put shit in

7:09

texts. Meaning if you make a phone call and say

7:11

something illegal instead of putting

7:13

it in a text, then you're not going to get in trouble

7:16

for it.

7:16

He was joking, I think, but also

7:19

it was the kind of thing he said and

7:21

that people would laugh at until at the end

7:23

of the year he was getting in sort of legal

7:25

trouble and people would wonder,

7:27

did he do illegal things that he didn't put in texts?

7:30

He to me was one of these great

7:33

Washington figures that

7:35

if you got to know him, you could really understand a

7:38

good chunk of Washington.

7:39

He was ideologically malleable.

7:42

He kind of had his finger in the air for wherever

7:45

the winds were blowing in democratic politics. He

7:47

started out as this

7:49

Bernie Sanders socialist

7:52

type hosting happy hours in Brooklyn.

7:54

He became an Elizabeth Warren type,

7:57

he moved a little bit that way. Then he became a big Biden

7:59

supporter.

7:59

depending on where the power

8:02

happened to be in democratic politics, he was always

8:04

kind of at the center of it.

8:05

And so Sean heads up this firm Data

8:07

for Progress, but then he has

8:10

this fall from grace, right? Because he's really

8:13

very powerful for a period

8:15

of time. He's

8:18

producing these polls for these big Senate races,

8:21

and people in the White House know who he is,

8:23

and other movers and shakers, but then he has

8:25

this sort of dissent

8:28

that happens, I feel like pretty quickly. You're

8:31

right. I mean, he had this really quick rise

8:33

and this very dramatic fall. So

8:36

Sean started Data for Progress in around 2018,

8:39

and it had this really impressive rise, and

8:42

it became a very central

8:44

tool in progressive politics and in democratic

8:46

politics. But by the end of the

8:48

year, 2022, after the midterms, the

8:53

staff that had looked up to Sean turned

8:55

on him.

8:59

And I got

9:01

a sense it was possible right from the beginning. The

9:03

first time I go to play poker with him at his

9:05

poker night,

9:07

he starts bragging about bets

9:09

he's

9:10

made that are not related to poker at

9:12

all.

9:14

He's

9:14

talking to me in the entire table about

9:17

political bets he's made on a website called

9:19

PredictIt. What he's doing is

9:21

he's betting on elections. He's

9:23

betting on political outcomes, like

9:26

whether a bill will pass or not. He

9:28

has really weird bets with some of his friends,

9:30

like whether a senator who had a stroke will be back

9:32

by a certain day or not. Oh my gosh. And

9:35

it's one thing to do it, it's another thing to be so open about

9:37

it. And so I'm watching this happen

9:39

in real time, and I barely know Sean at this

9:41

point, and I'm a journalist. And I'm

9:44

thinking like this

9:44

could be

9:45

a scandal, but instead

9:47

of keeping it quiet, he's openly

9:49

bragging about this to everybody.

9:52

I

9:53

mean, there's something sort of Trumpy about that, right? Right, right.

9:56

If there's a scandal that you announce,

9:58

it doesn't seem a scandalous.

9:59

Like I have nothing to be ashamed about. There's no problem

10:02

here. Right, it can't be a scandal if I'm talking about it. Right.

10:04

But he also had a theory for why he did it. He

10:06

said, look, I'm a pollster, I'm a numbers

10:08

guy, I'm a data guy, and if I

10:11

can't put my money where my mouth is, then

10:14

what good am I? And so he thinks it's making him a better

10:16

pollster, a better analyst, a better consultant.

10:19

And

10:20

he encouraged his staff to bet too, and

10:22

this staff of young

10:24

people who are all kind of new to Washington and

10:26

they don't necessarily know any better. So

10:28

they get wrapped up into this

10:30

whole thing.

10:31

It's like a culture of this that's emerging. Yeah,

10:33

it's a culture, and somebody I talked

10:35

to kind of said it almost felt like a cult, right? Oh,

10:38

wow. Where he's this guy who is

10:40

smart and has figured something

10:42

out, and he's done a lot of good for young

10:45

people in his organization, put them in positions of

10:47

power that normally take decades

10:49

to get into, getting him into rooms

10:52

with people who wouldn't normally

10:54

take a meeting with a 25-year-old who's only

10:56

been in Washington for a year. All that

10:58

betting is fine in a way while

11:01

he's on the rise, but once

11:03

people have a different opinion of him,

11:06

it's more of a liability.

11:08

And so what happened to Sean and

11:10

his gambling? Democrats ended up

11:12

doing better than they expected in the midterms,

11:15

but

11:15

that wasn't necessarily a great thing for Sean.

11:18

He was sort of out there making public

11:20

bets against Democrats. But

11:23

then when Democrats outperformed, including

11:25

Federman, who ended up winning despite

11:28

some bad polling right before the election,

11:30

Sean kind of didn't look as brilliant as he thought

11:33

he looked. Yeah, like he was wrong. He was wrong. He

11:35

had in fact

11:36

placed some bets against Federman.

11:38

And he's working for his campaign. Oh

11:41

my gosh. It was not a good look.

11:43

No. And the Federman campaign was very

11:45

unhappy about it. Yeah. You know, one

11:47

thing that was particularly

11:49

shocking to me when reading your book, and I don't know,

11:51

am I naive? But I feel like this

11:54

was a revelation that there are people

11:56

who are gambling on

11:58

politics and on the outside.

11:59

of outcomes of elections.

12:03

Is this common? Can you explain this

12:05

to me? It seems pretty wild. And

12:08

could it also be considered like inside our

12:10

trading in some ways?

12:12

So I was completely shocked by it. I didn't

12:14

know about it. And I definitely don't think of myself

12:16

as naive. But I was surprised

12:19

to hear about it. I was surprised to hear about how

12:21

open it was. And I was also surprised that nobody

12:23

else at the poker table

12:24

seemed surprised. Sean's

12:27

story is definitely told as a kind of cautionary tale.

12:30

Data for progress no longer allows

12:33

any political betting.

12:35

Not only are they not encouraging it, it is

12:37

not allowed. So there's

12:39

one argument here, right, that by betting

12:41

on politics,

12:44

you are, you know, putting your money where

12:46

your mouth is. But on the other

12:48

hand, I feel like

12:51

doesn't it sort of trivialize

12:53

the whole political process? Because, oh,

12:55

if this person loses this race, I'm going

12:57

to be out like 100 bucks or whatever. But

13:00

you could also view it as, oh, if this person loses

13:02

this race, that means this is what's going

13:04

to happen with a lot of important

13:08

policies that impact thousands and hundreds

13:10

of thousands and millions of people's lives. Yeah,

13:13

I mean, who wins

13:13

elections and what legislation

13:16

gets passed,

13:18

we all have skin in that game, right? I mean, that's,

13:21

I think, yes, it does trivialize it. You

13:23

know, there's a problem in politics, in my opinion, about

13:26

the way it's covered and the way that people read about it

13:28

and think about it as sports, as

13:30

a game. And this is just one more

13:33

example of that. I don't want to sound

13:35

like some sort of, you know, school marm, you know, telling

13:37

people don't have any fun out there. I mean,

13:40

you're

13:40

out here writing about the weirdos. Yeah, so, yeah, I mean, it's fine

13:42

that people have all sorts of

13:45

ways to think about things. But to

13:48

me, it's like, I don't know, it's not really a game. And if

13:50

people think of Washington as only filled with

13:53

people that

13:55

think of politics as a game, then of course

13:57

people are going to hate Washington, and then

13:59

of course

13:59

run against Washington, and then it makes it a lot

14:02

harder for things to get done here.

14:07

After the break, Ben takes us behind the

14:09

scenes with Republicans in

14:11

a post-Trump Washington. We'll

14:13

be right back.

14:22

So this is all on the Democratic side of things,

14:25

but you also look at what Donald

14:27

Trump did to the people

14:30

in Washington who helped

14:34

further his agenda when he was in office, the

14:36

Republican side of things. So tell

14:38

me about some of the people you spent

14:40

time with and what kind

14:43

of big break did they have when it

14:45

comes to Republicans.

14:46

So one of the people I spent time with on the Republican

14:49

side was a guy named Matt Schlapp.

14:53

He,

14:53

in the Bush years, George W.

14:55

Bush years, worked in the White House as

14:58

a political director, kind of one of these real

15:00

establishment figure types,

15:02

you know, people who have been around in Washington for long

15:04

enough. They know how the game is played.

15:06

They are usually pretty nice to everybody

15:09

around, and they get lobbying jobs,

15:11

and they make a good amount of money, and they sit on boards.

15:13

Yeah, and Matt Schlapp, he

15:15

is the chairman of this big conservative conference

15:18

that happens every year called CPAC,

15:20

which is put on by the American

15:22

Conservative Union. So

15:25

maybe people don't know Matt Schlapp as a name,

15:27

but they might be very familiar with CPAC.

15:29

Ben, why were you interested in

15:32

Matt Schlapp?

15:33

What made him interesting to me is how

15:35

quickly he became a Trump

15:38

loyalist.

15:42

He was one of the first people in Washington to continue

15:45

supporting Donald Trump after the Access

15:47

Hollywood video broke in 2016.

15:59

They let you do it. You can do anything.

16:02

Whatever you want. I

16:04

can do anything. Pull the house. He and his wife,

16:07

Mercedes, who was also

16:09

a Bush alum,

16:11

drove

16:12

out to their fancy country house

16:14

in Virginia and split a bottle of wine and tried to

16:16

figure out whether they wanted to continue supporting Donald

16:18

Trump despite that

16:21

really nasty video of

16:23

his where he said that it was okay to grope

16:25

women, and they decided ultimately,

16:27

yeah, they would double down on their support. It was better for the country they

16:30

believed for him to be president than for

16:32

Hillary Clinton, and they also believed it would be better

16:34

for them, and they were right.

16:43

They became this

16:44

kind of it couple,

16:46

this Donald Trump it couple that

16:49

could make a killing. They ended up making so much money, they

16:52

moved into the largest house on a

16:54

street called Mansion Drive, and they got a crane at one

16:56

point, and they hung

16:58

a giant Trump flag from it. As

17:00

one does. As one does. They just leaned very

17:02

much into it.

17:04

This is sort of the story of Republicans in Washington,

17:06

right? At first, they

17:08

might not be total Donald Trump supporters, but then

17:11

they all came around, and I was interested

17:13

in how that happens and why that happens and how sturdy that is.

17:17

Is this loyalty to Trump forever,

17:20

or is it only as long as Trump is

17:22

powerful? And so I spent time with

17:25

him, but

17:27

what makes his story most interesting to me is actually

17:30

another kind of

17:31

break that happened, and that's between him

17:33

and one of his long-time

17:36

employees, a right-hand man type named Ian

17:38

Walters.

17:39

He was the spokesman for Match

17:41

Lab for years. My role in

17:44

his life, as

17:46

you know, is to say,

17:49

okay, what's

17:52

real here and what do we need to say? Understand

17:55

the politics of it as well. So

17:58

let's say something smart. strong

18:01

and provocative, but

18:03

that we'll hold up scrutiny.

18:06

Okay? That's why they keep me around.

18:10

Ian

18:11

was so close to the Schlapp's that when he and

18:13

his wife had their, I think,

18:15

third child, they

18:17

were debating whether or not to have the Schlapp's be the godparents.

18:21

But by the time I start reporting this book out, he

18:23

and Matt

18:24

are not speaking at all. And I

18:26

spent time with Ian Walters

18:28

and his wife, Karen, and Matt

18:30

Schlapp separately, kind

18:33

of getting their stories, figuring out

18:35

where they fit into the Washington

18:38

landscape, the Republican landscape, the political

18:40

landscape, but also where they fit into each other's

18:42

lives. It was a very healthy relationship

18:44

for a long time, I feel it. Maybe

18:47

it wasn't, but it worked. Well,

18:49

there also

18:50

was, I mean, you always had a different sort

18:52

of experience with Matt than I did. Uh-huh.

18:55

I was actually much more frequently than I did.

18:58

And

18:59

by the end of it, I mean, they just didn't fit into each other's lives

19:01

at all. And the things that he's decided

19:04

are important to him. I

19:08

am increasingly convinced

19:10

of frivolous. Like what? Clicks,

19:14

tweaks, likes, followers.

19:20

It's

19:22

having grown up around it. I don't.

19:26

I've never been particularly hungry for it.

19:29

And that story really

19:31

did tell me a lot about how Republican politics

19:33

are working today.

19:38

Ian was born

19:38

into the Washington establishment

19:40

in a way. He grew up in the area. His

19:43

father was the chief political correspondent

19:46

for the Washington Times. So

19:48

he was around politics for his whole life. And

19:51

when he went to work for CPAC,

19:54

he loved it at first. It's this huge

19:56

event and Republicans flock

19:59

to it every year. if you're a Republican running for

20:01

president, you pretty much have to go to CPAC. In

20:05

recent years, it's become almost like a rally

20:07

for Donald Trump. And Ian

20:10

was always a little bit skeptical

20:12

about it, but he supported Donald Trump. He

20:14

voted for him. He put on the show

20:17

and would spin on behalf of it. And it's not

20:19

like he was completely naive

20:22

to what he was doing. He knew that there was some dark

20:25

stuff happening in American politics, and he was

20:28

part of it. But

20:30

especially after January 6th, he really starts

20:32

to realize that he

20:34

doesn't want to be associated with this. And

20:37

it's just like, my God, what are we going to

20:39

have to deal with? This makes

20:41

all of us look like

20:44

such. Here

20:46

are, whether you like it or not, your

20:50

ambassadors who are speaking

20:52

on your behalf. And that

20:54

sure as hell is the message that

20:56

we've been a part of.

20:59

Plenty of people in Republican politics don't want

21:05

to be associated if they

21:07

had their druthers with Donald

21:09

Trump or January 6th. But a lot of people

21:12

do it anyway. It's how they make a living

21:14

or they decide, well, there needs to be some adults

21:16

in the room. So if I leave, then who am I leaving this to?

21:18

Right, this idea of like, oh, I'm the

21:21

adult in the room. I'm the guardrail. And this is

21:23

sort of what Ian was telling himself, right?

21:25

Ian was telling himself that and telling me

21:27

that. But at a certain point it becomes untenable.

21:30

My stock answer has been, look,

21:33

my new job is, auditioning for dad

21:35

of the year. And it's like,

21:38

I quit smoking. I remember somebody told

21:40

me once, it's like, that must be tough for you, Ian, because it's sort

21:42

of part of your identity. And this

21:45

is the same thing. This is part of my identity.

21:47

It's something that I've given

21:49

a good chunk of my life to. And

21:52

because of that, I sort of need it to

21:54

succeed. I need it to do well because

21:57

I'm CPAC Ian. Right?

22:00

That's what you're in my phone, that's... Yeah, right. It... For

22:02

so many people. For like 15 years, or

22:05

however long it's been. So there's

22:07

this

22:08

pre-leaving exercise

22:11

that's walking up the mountain to say, I

22:14

am done. The

22:17

whys are not so clear. All right,

22:19

so what... How do you arrive at that point? It's

22:22

gut, it's emotional,

22:23

it's instinctive. There's

22:26

no, well, because this happened on

22:28

this day.

22:30

And what was interesting to me is,

22:32

it's not just a story of a guy whose politics

22:35

make him decide, okay, I can't be a part of this anymore. A

22:38

lot of this is personal drama and pettiness and

22:40

what it's like to work with somebody that

22:42

you're so close with and then have a falling out

22:44

with them.

22:45

I thought we were brothers and we could

22:48

hem and haw and talk smack to one another,

22:50

affectionately, in a useful,

22:54

productive kind of way. And

22:56

it just sort of began to deteriorate. And it

22:58

was sad and I didn't know the reason

23:01

why. But

23:03

that can affect your, shall

23:06

we say, well-being

23:09

in an office environment,

23:10

a great deal. And sometimes

23:13

these big breaks that you go

23:15

through, you know, ideological shifts

23:17

or deciding to leave your party or leave your job,

23:19

sometimes those big breaks only happen

23:22

because a lot of little breaks happen first.

23:27

So after all of your time talking

23:30

to people who are behind

23:32

the scenes, behind the curtains, not the big

23:34

names that most people know,

23:37

how did your sense of Washington after

23:39

Trump change? Do you have

23:41

a clear sense? And what is your sense

23:43

of how Washington after Trump is? There's

23:46

a lot of people who have had this long-time

23:49

view of Washington as a place where there's

23:51

these secret rooms

23:54

where things happen, right? Smoke-filled

23:57

rooms where masters of the universe

23:59

are pulling up.

23:59

strings and doing nefarious

24:02

things. What I've sort of

24:04

found is that most of these rooms

24:06

anyway are filled with

24:09

people not like that at all. Like often it's like

24:11

pretty idiotic what's happening in these rooms. And

24:14

I think that one of the things that Trump did is he sort

24:17

of made it

24:18

okay to be

24:20

more

24:21

of a showman than a brilliant

24:23

mind, right? I mean there's a lot of people in Washington

24:26

who decided to like imitate parts

24:28

of Trump and

24:29

they can get away with it because people it turns out

24:31

love showmen in Washington.

24:33

And do you feel like things

24:36

are actually different than the pre-Trump

24:38

days? And will they always be this

24:40

way? Yeah, Donald Trump

24:42

once he left town I mean his fingerprints

24:45

remained all over Washington, right? And

24:48

so I think that there are parts

24:50

of Washington that he revealed

24:52

that were always there, right? People

24:55

acting like they know things when they don't really know things

24:57

or people who are willing to

25:00

change their ideology depending

25:02

on where the power and the money is at any

25:04

given moment.

25:06

But Donald Trump I mean basically

25:08

put all that stuff in Washington into super drive.

25:11

And so the things that were there are now

25:14

much bigger, much Trumpier

25:17

than they were even though he's not here anymore.

25:22

So I guess one of the things that people talk about especially

25:25

on Twitter when they're talking about Washington is

25:27

that how it's become a place where people say

25:29

the quiet part loud, where

25:32

it used to be that you have to at least

25:35

for the sake of shame and for the sake of decorum

25:37

and for the sake of not offending people out

25:39

in the world kind of tone

25:42

down what you really mean,

25:44

right? And now people

25:47

are saying the things that they're supposed to keep

25:49

quiet loudly because Trump has

25:51

sort of made that okay.

25:52

Once you say

25:55

the scandalous thing out loud and people

25:57

are okay with it, I do think people

26:00

way with more scandalous things. And

26:03

this is what the whole Sean and Benning

26:05

thing was about, right? He

26:08

was saying the quiet part out loud. Sure,

26:10

there are people who are cynical that treat politics

26:12

like a game, but they don't go out

26:14

and say, I'm treating politics like a game, and

26:16

I'm going to make money off of it, because people

26:19

would not like that. But now this

26:22

place sort of operates with

26:24

the volume turned up louder than it ever was before.

26:30

So looking ahead after spending all

26:32

of this time evaluating how Trump

26:36

transformed Washington, what are

26:38

your thoughts going into 2024? Trump

26:40

is running again, and if he

26:42

wins, and I know there's a lot

26:45

to talk about within that,

26:47

on this question, how

26:49

Washington has changed, will it transform

26:52

once again? Like, what are you sitting

26:54

and thinking about when you look ahead

26:56

to 2024?

26:58

Yeah, there was a lot of talk when Trump

27:01

left town that

27:02

people were going to start putting up all these guardrails

27:05

to keep what happened

27:07

in 2016 and beyond from happening again.

27:10

And really, I don't think any of those guardrails

27:12

really fully got put up. And so

27:14

the same way this was a place that

27:17

he could move into in 2016, it feels

27:20

very possible that it could happen again. I

27:23

would not make any predictions, because part of the point

27:25

in this book is it's filled with people who make predictions

27:27

and end up being wrong. And there's

27:29

no consequences for them, and I try to make

27:31

fun of them a little bit for it. And so I don't want to be

27:33

somebody that I would make fun of. So I don't know what's going

27:35

to happen at all. That's a good role in life in general.

27:39

So I don't know what's going to happen, but certainly

27:42

it has not changed enough as a place that

27:46

will obviously reject someone like

27:48

Donald Trump. There are still a lot

27:50

of the same forces here

27:53

that brought him here last time.

27:57

Well, Ben, thanks so much for not just

27:59

writing the book, but joining us. us to talk

28:01

about it. Of course. Thanks for having me. Ben

28:05

Terrace covers national politics for the Style

28:07

section. That's it for Post

28:09

Reports. Thanks for listening. Today's

28:13

show was produced by Eliza Dennis. It

28:15

was mixed by Sam Bear and edited

28:18

by Rina Flores. If

28:20

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and review on Apple podcasts. We

28:29

really appreciate it. I'm

28:31

Elahe Izzadi. We'll be back

28:34

tomorrow with

28:34

more stories from The Washington Post.