Stuart Stevens,
welcome to The Daily Social Distancing Show.
Thanks, Trevor. It's great to be here. Thank you.
Um, you are part of The Lincoln Project,
which is a group of Republican never-Trumpers
who have gained a lot of notoriety online
for putting out slick memes and anti-Trump, um,
you know, pictures or GIFs or whatever it may be
that have really targeted the president
from a Republican point of view.
Tell me what that means from your perspective.
Because, I mean, for some people,
they might think that's a paradox.
How can you be a Republican who is never Trump?
It's a group of us who worked in a lot of Republican campaigns,
um, and we really feel
that Donald Trump is not only a threat
to the Republican Party.
He's a threat to the country and democracy itself.
Um, he represents everything
that we thought we were working against.
We thought we had joined up a party where character counts,
personal responsibility mattered, strong on Russia,
the debt was important, free trade.
Donald Trump was against all of those things.
So we kind of had three choices.
We could be for Trump. Well, that wasn't gonna happen.
Or we'd sit it out, which sort of sucked.
Or use the skills that we have to try to beat Trump.
So we're going with door number three and trying to beat him.
To say that you have helped many Republicans get into office,
but then turn around and say
that you are against Donald Trump might be confusing,
because people would say that,
"Well, Donald Trump is the natural evolution
-of the Republicans that we've seen come into office." -Right.
Um, the party has aligned around him,
everyone from Marco Rubio to Mitch McConnell.
So the question then is,
is Donald Trump not just a crass version
of what the Republicans wanted but a Republican, nonetheless?
Well, look, you know, I asked that question--
it led me to write this book, It Was All a Lie.
Um, I think you're right,
it is what the Republican Party wants.
I think the Republican Party became Donald Trump.
I don't think that Donald Trump is an aberration,
a black swan who hijacked the party.
Um, in this book, I try to trace the history of the party,
and I think there's always been sort of two elements.
You go back to the '50s, there was Joe McCarthy
and Dwight Eisenhower--
kind of a crazy wing and a governing wing.
Um, and I think that's continued.
I was involved in, uh, Governor Bush's campaign in '99
and President Bush, and we tried to create a new model
of compassionate conservatism, as he called it.
Um, and we felt we were the dominant gene of the party,
that it was inevitable that the direction
we wanted the party to go into would triumph.
I think now we have to conclude--
I have to conclude anyway, personally--
that that was wrong.
We were the recessive gene.
And that darker side of the party
really was the heart and soul of the party,
at least as it's constructed now.
When you... when you release a book
with the title, It Was All a Lie--
it's a fantastic title, in my opinion,
because it speaks to so many truths.
The question I have for you, though, is:
were you fooled by the lie,
or, because you were helping these politicians
get into power, were you part of the lie?
Yeah, that's a great question.
And the answer is both.
Um, and I've tried to be as honest as I can,
and this is a book that isn't "blame them."
Um, I mean, I start out by saying "blame me."
I can't in good faith say
I believe in personal responsibility
and was drawn to the party because of that
without taking personal responsibility.
Um, I was part of this.
(sighs): I think that...
I felt that we were building towards something
that was greater and better and bigger than ourselves.
Um, I think I've looked too much the other way
when we saw this dark side.
Um... but the-the essence of it,
uh, that we now have embraced,
the Republican Party as a white nationalist party,
I never in my wildest dreams, perhaps naively,
uh, felt that was possible.
So what do you actually hope to achieve, seeing how Trump
has just completely owned and controlled this political party?
Which we see more every day.
Um, I think that, uh, it's important
to just go out there and fight, Trevor.
And the end result of that fight is never clear,
um, in any of these battles.
You have to believe in what you're doing at that moment.
And look, one of the things that shouldn't be overlooked here
is, while Donald Trump says he has 95% popularity in the party,
that's probably an exaggeration, but it's 89% or 88%, probably.
But the party's getting smaller, so as...
He keeps that intensity, because a lot of people,
who are independents, who are self-identifying as Republicans,
no longer identify as Republicans.
So he has shrunk the party.
Since 1964, Republicans have not attracted African Americans
in any number, which is a huge, huge failure of the party.
But we admitted it was a failure,
and we tried to aspire to something better.
Now Trump is just comfortable with this.
So the party is getting smaller,
um, and there's really not a future for that party
uh, in a changing America, as it is now.
Where do you go back to?
Is it about defeating Donald Trump
and then going back to the Republican Party
and then continuing many of the policies
that had helped create Donald Trump?
Or is there another way?
Because that's the one thing that I'm left with is,
what do you go to,
and where do many of your fellow Never Trumpers go back to
if, in many ways, the poison is still within the party,
even if Trump is not in, uh, in the White House?
Well, we're gonna fight Trump-ism, um, in all its forms.
Which I think is really fighting for American democracy.
I think there's... there's really three parties
in American now: there's a Republican Party,
which is basically a party that says "no" to everything;
and then there's two parties inside the Democratic Party--
call it an AOC-Sanders wing and a Biden wing.
-Mm-hmm. -And the future of America
is gonna be decided within that debate.
I mean, take national health insurance.
In 20 years, will America be the only country
that doesn't have national health insurance?
Or Western democracy. Of course we're not.
But what's that going to be is going to be decided
in the Democratic Party, not the Republican Party.
So I want to be part of what's gonna matter,
and I think the Republican Party--
as it has in California, where it's now in third place--
is gonna become increasingly irrelevant
in the national debate about the future of the country.
You have written a book that people are talking about,
so, uh, congratulations on that.
And thank you so much for joining us on the show.
Thank you, Trevor. Enjoyed it.