It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump (19 page)

BOOK: It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump
9.7Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Donald Trump has served a useful purpose by exposing the deep flaws of a major American political party. Like a heavy truck driven over a bridge on the edge of collapse, Trump has made it impossible to ignore the long-developing fault lines and failures of the Republican Party. A party rooted in decency and values does not embrace the vicious hate that Donald Trump peddles as patriotism. But the Republican Party did and does. This moment should signal a day of reckoning for the party and all who claim it as a political identity. Will it? I’m not hopeful. Better than most, I know the seductive lure of believing what you prefer to believe and ignoring the obvious truth.

What the Republican Party must realize is that it needs America more than America needs the party. And the America it needs is the one that is 320 million Americans and growing, a country of immigrants and less white every day: the real America, not the gauzy Shangri-La of suburban bliss that never existed. I’d like to say I believe the party I spent so many years fighting for could rise to that challenge. But that would be a lie, and there have been too many lies for too long.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A special note of appreciation to Scott Merriman, who greatly assisted in sourcing and footnoting as well as bringing general smarts and a great reader’s eye to the entire effort. Many thanks to Lynette Smith, who helped transform a rough first draft of misspellings and strange typos into far more readable form. Reid Singer was extraordinarily helpful in the fact-checking and research of
It Was All a Lie.
As always, all mistakes and errors are completely my fault and responsibility.

And a very heartfelt expression of gratitude to Andrew Miller, Maris Dyer, and the entire Knopf editorial team. I grew up reading Knopf authors and seeing my writing published under the Knopf name is one dream of my youth that I feel so very fortunate to have come true.

Lastly, my deepest appreciation to Peter Matson of the Sterling Lord Literistic Agency. It has been often observed that it is impossible to get published without an agent and impossible to get an agent without being published. I was somehow fortunate enough to avoid that paradox and have been guided and supported by Peter Matson from the first nutty idea I had about writing a book retracing Peter Fleming’s journey across China. He is the rarest combination of encouraging but critical, a superb reader, and I have no doubt I would never have been published without his wisdom. Eight books later, he’s changed my life and I will be forever grateful.

NOTES
CHAPTER 1: RACE, THE ORIGINAL REPUBLICAN SIN

1.
Bob Herbert, “Impossible, Ridiculous, Repugnant,”
New York Times,
Oct. 6, 2005,
www.nytimes.com
.

2.
Theodore White,
The Making of the President, 1960
(New York: HarperPerennial, 2009).

3.
Office of the Historian, “Election Statistics, 1920 to the Present,”
history.house.gov
.

4.
Roper Center, “How Groups Voted in 2012,”
ropercenter.cornell.edu
.

5.
Ian Haney López,
Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).

6.
Seymour Martin Lipset, ed.,
Emerging Coalitions in American Politics
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1978), 309–10.

7.
Martin Schram, “A Taxing Question for Presidents,”
Valley News,
May 9, 2019,
www.vnews.com
.

8.
Steve Chapman, “The Truth About Obama and Welfare Reform,” RealClearPolitics, Aug. 26, 2012,
www.realclearpolitics.com
.

9.
Molly Ball, “What Obama Really Did to Welfare Reform,”
Atlantic,
Aug. 9, 2012,
www.theatlantic.com
.

10.
“Transcript of Ronald Reagan’s 1980 Neshoba County Fair Speech,”
Neshoba Democrat,
Nov. 15, 2007,
neshobademocrat.com
.

11.
NBC Sports Bay Area Staff, “Trump to Anthem Protesters: ‘Get That Son of a B—— off the Field,’ ” NBC Sports, Sept. 22, 2017,
www.nbcsports.com
.

12.
“Exit Poll Results: How Different Groups Voted in Alabama,”
Washington Post,
Dec. 13, 2017,
www.washingtonpost.com
.

13.
Wallace, quoted in “The Stand in the Schoolhouse Door (Tuscaloosa, Alabama),” Civil Rights Teaching,
www.civilrightsteaching.org
.

14.
Jeanne Theoharis,
A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History
(Boston: Beacon Press, 2018), 47.

15.
George Packer, “Dividing the Democrats,”
New Yorker,
Aug. 12, 2008,
www.newyorker.com
.

16.
Hearings, Reports, and Prints of the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities,
402.

17.
Vanessa Barker,
The Politics of Imprisonment: How the Democratic Process Shapes the Way America Punishes Offenders
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 66.

18.
Trump, quoted in Amber Phillips, “ ‘They’re Rapists.’ President Trump’s Campaign Launch Speech Two Years Later, Annotated,”
Washington Post,
June 16, 2017,
www.washingtonpost.com
.

19.
U.S. Senate,
Presidential Campaign Activities of 1972, Senate Resolution 60, Watergate and Related Activities
(Washington, D.C.: Government Publishing Office, 1973), 4199—200,
www.govinfo.gov
.

20.
Packer, “Dividing the Democrats.”

21.
“Growth and Opportunity Project, RNC,”
Wall Street Journal,
March 18, 2013,
online.wsj.com
.

22.
Soraya Chemaly, “Todd Akin: It’s Not a War on Women, It’s a War on Critical Thinking and Democracy,”
HuffPost,
Oct. 20, 2012,
www.huffpost.com
.

23.
Meghan Keneally, “Trump Shrugs Off Hitler Comparison,” ABC 7, Dec. 8, 2015,
abc7.com
.

24.
Dallas Franklin and CNN Wire, “ ‘His Promises Are as Worthless as a Degree from Trump University’: Mitt Romney Delivers Speech on Trump,” Oklahoma’s News 4, March 3, 2016,
kfor.com
.

CHAPTER 2: FAMILY VALUES

1.
Joe Heim, “Liberty University’s Jerry Falwell Jr. on Trump: ‘I Can’t Imagine Him Doing Anything That’s Not Good for the Country,’ ”
Richmond Times Dispatch,
Jan. 1, 2019,
www.richmond.com
.

2.
Robert P. Jones, “White Evangelicals Can’t Quit Donald Trump,”
Atlantic,
April 20, 2018,
www.theatlantic.com
.

3.
Seth Dowland,
Family Values and the Rise of the Christian Right
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), Kindle.

4.
Heather Kerrigan, ed.,
Historic Documents of 2018
(Thousand Oaks, Calif.: CQ Press, 2019), 392.

5.
Robert O. Self,
All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s
(New York: Hill and Wang, 2012), 4.

6.
Ben Howe,
The Immoral Majority: Why Evangelicals Chose Political Power over Christian Values
(New York: Broadside Books, 2019), Kindle.

7.
Allan J. Lichtman,
White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement
(New York: Grove Press, 2009), 321.

8.
“NGTF’S Apuzzo Debates F.P.A. Advocates on Boston TV,”
Bay Area Reporter
(San Francisco), Feb. 4, 1982, 8.

9.
Tony Kushner,
Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes,
rev. ed. (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2013), 46.

10.
Stephen Strang,
God and Donald Trump
(Lake Mary, Fla.: Frontline, 2017), xv.

11.
Sara Jerde, “Rafael Cruz: God Sent My Son’s Wife a Sign That He Should Run for President,” Talking Points Memo, Feb. 22, 2016,
talkingpointsmemo.com
.

12.
Chuck Currie, “Rick Perry Wants God to Take over Governing of Texas, America,”
HuffPost,
Sept. 13, 2011,
www.huffpost.com
.

13.
Thomas Byrne Edsall, “Is God Really Telling Rick Perry to Run for President?,”
Atlantic,
Nov. 10, 2011.

14.
Jessica Martinez and Gregory A. Smith, “How the Faithful Voted: A Preliminary 2016 Analysis,” Pew Research Center, Nov. 9, 2016,
www.pewresearch.org
.

15.
Peter Wehner, “Why I Can No Longer Call Myself an Evangelical Republican,”
New York Times,
Dec. 9, 2017,
www.nytimes.com
.

16.
Rick Wilson,
Everything Trump Touches Dies: A Republican Strategist Gets Real About the Worst President Ever
(New York: Free Press, 2018).

17.
Michael Gerson, “The Last Temptation,”
Atlantic,
April 2018.

CHAPTER 3: THE LONG CON

1.
Judd Gregg, “Judd Gregg: The GOP Abandons Fiscal Responsibility,”
Hill,
April 9, 2018,
thehill.com
.

2.
Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner, “5 Takeaways from 10 Years of Trump Tax Figures,”
New York Times,
May 7, 2019,
www.nytimes.com
.

3.
“National Republican Party Platform 2016,” GOP, July 18, 2016,
www.gop.com
.

4.
“National Republican Party Platform 2012,”
New York Times,
Aug. 28, 2012,
archive.nytimes.com
.

5.
“The Debt to the Penny and Who Holds It,” TreasuryDirect, accessed July 18, 2019,
treasurydirect.gov
.

6.
Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, “Transcript: Donald Trump Interview with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa,”
Washington Post,
April 2, 2016,
washingtonpost.com
.

7.
Paul Ryan, “Transcript: Rep. Paul Ryan’s Convention Speech,” National Public Radio, Aug. 29, 2012,
www.npr.org
.

8.
Steve Clemons, “GOP Presidents Have Been the Worst Contributors to the Federal Debt,”
Atlantic,
Oct. 27, 2012,
www.theatlantic.com
.

9.
Bill Clinton, “State of the Union Address,” Miller Center, Jan. 27, 1998,
millercenter.org
.

10.
Congressional Record, 1993,
Thomas; Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-GA)
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1993).

11.
Congressional Record, 1993, Rep. Christopher Cox (R-CA)
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office).

12.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, “Which President ‘Created’ More Jobs?,”
Wall Street Journal,
Nov. 8, 2016,
wsj.com
.

13.
Jessica Johnson, “President Trump Calls California High-Speed Rail a ‘Green Disaster,’ ”
Your Central Valley,
Feb. 13, 2019,
www.yourcentralvalley.com
; Nancy Isenson, “How California Became Donald Trump’s Most Hated State,”
DW,
Nov. 23, 2018.

14.
John Tierney, “Which States Are Givers and Which Are Takers? And Is That Even the Correct Way to Frame the Question?,”
Atlantic,
May 5, 2014,
www.theatlantic.com
.

15.
Martin, Jonathan, “On Win Streak, Mainline G.O.P. Takes Tougher Stance Toward Tea Party,”
New York Times,
May 31, 2014,
www.nytimes.com
.

16.
Chris Cillizza, “How Thad Cochran Won,”
Washington Post,
June 24, 2014,
www.washingtonpost.com
.

17.
Jerry Hagstrom, “Farm Groups Denounce Heritage Report; EWG, UCS Praise It,”
Agweek,
Sept. 9, 2016,
www.agweek.com
.

18.
Ibid.

19.
Daren Bakst, “Farm Subsidy Apologists Are Painting a Misleading Picture: Here Are the Facts,” Heritage Foundation, March 7, 2017,
www.heritage.org
.

20.
Alex Shephard, “The Farm Bill Is Everything That’s Wrong with Congress,”
New Republic,
May 18, 2018,
newrepublic.com
.

21.
Tamar Haspel, “Why Do Taxpayers Subsidize Rich Farmers?,”
Washington Post,
March 15, 2018,
www.washingtonpost.com
.

22.
Doug Bandow, “Corporate Welfare Lives On and On,”
American Conservative,
Aug. 29, 2018,
theamericanconservative.com
.

23.
Ethan Baron, “Google, Tesla, Apple, Facebook Rake in Massive Subsidies: Report,”
San Jose Mercury News,
July 3, 2018,
mercurynews.com
.

24.
John Stossel, “The Super Bowl of Corporate Welfare,”
Reason,
Jan. 30, 2019,
reason.com
.

25.
Daniel Cebul, “US Remains Top Military Spender, SIPRI Reports,”
Defense News,
May 2, 2018,
defensenews.com
.

26.
Lawrence J. Korb, Laura Conley, and Alex Rothman, “A Historical Perspective on Defense Budgets,” Center for American Progress, July 6, 2011,
americanprogress.org
.

27.
James C. Capretta, “The Necessity and Impossibility of Entitlement Reform,” AEI, Oct. 24, 2018,
www.aei.org
.

28.
Paul C. Light, “Government’s Most Visible Failures, 2001–2014,” Brookings Institution, July 14, 2014,
brookings.edu
.

29.
Nancy Friedman, “Word of the Week: Kinsley Gaffe,”
Fritinancy,
Aug. 22, 2011,
nancyfriedman.typepad.com
.

30.
Peter T. Kilborne, “Achievements, but Failures, Too, for Reaganomics,”
New York Times,
July 1, 1983,
www.nytimes.com
.

31.
Jennifer Burns,
Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 275.

32.
George Gilder,
Wealth and Poverty: A New Edition for the Twenty-First Century
(Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2012), Kindle.

33.
Francis X. Clines, “Reagan Attacks Mondale, Vowing Veto of Tax Rises,”
New York Times,
Aug. 5, 1984,
www.nytimes.com
.

34.
Michael Wines, “The 1992 Campaign: The Ad Campaign; Clinton, Reminding Voters of a Promise,”
New York Times,
Oct. 3, 1992,
www.nytimes.com
.

35.
Becky Little, “How a Petty Snub Led to Clinton’s Government Shutdown—and the Lewinsky Affair,”
History,
Dec. 13, 2018,
www.history.com
.

36.
Dylan Matthews, “Here Is Every Previous Government Shutdown, Why They Happened, and How They Ended,”
Washington Post,
Sept. 25, 2013, updated Dec. 22, 2018,
washingtonpost.com
.

37.
“2000, Bush vs. Gore,” The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952–2016,
www.livingroomcandidate.org
.

38.
Robert Denton Jr., ed.,
2000 Presidential Campaign: A Communication Perspective
(Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger, 2002), 142.

39.
Bobbie Battista, “Did Last Night’s Presidential Debate Change Voters’ Minds?,”
TalkBack Live,
CNN, Oct. 4, 2000,
edition.cnn.com
.

40.
David Weigel, “Remembering ‘Fuzzy Math,’ ”
Slate,
Oct. 4, 2012,
slate.com
.

41.
Stanley Greenberg, “Winning with the Economy—or Without It,”
American Prospect,
Sept. 19, 2009,
prospect.org
.

42.
George Bush, “Full Text of Bush’s Acceptance Speech,”
New York Times,
Aug. 4, 2000,
movies2.nytimes.com
.

43.
Churchill, quoted in Benjamin F. Martin,
France in 1938
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006), 219.

BOOK: It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump
9.7Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Initiation (Gypsy Harts #1) by C. D. Breadner
Going Where It's Dark by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
The Light of the Oracle by Victoria Hanley
Water Rites by Mary Rosenblum
Providence by Cocca, Lisa Colozza
Since She Went Away by David Bell
The Guns of Easter by Gerard Whelan