ask you to tell this stories, hulu . ah, ah, how much international intercourse in excellence award bought now for your hero?

ah. hello i. marianna massey and london are main story to south russia and ukraine of signed a deal to reopen ukrainian ports on the black sea for grain exports. arising hopes at my ease the global food crisis ceremony, and as dumble was overseen by the un secretary general, the turkish president who broke the agreement, grind shipments have been stuck in ukraine since the start of the russian invasion in february war has sent food prices soaring left people in some of the wells poorest countries facing salvation. well the you and she found her good terry's spoke with al jazeera after the deal was announced. he says it's a promising step towards peace. from the point of view of the management of the situation, we the joined to the center,

a joint coordination center with the 4 entities. and we, the inspections by the 4 entities of ships going in and out with ships permanently controlled. i think these us create the precedence of cooperation and i hope this precedent will pay for the way it will. busy busy not be immediate, it will takes time, it will be complex, but it to pave the way for one day peace to be possible and peace in line with international law and un charter protest isn't shanker of our, to continue the fight. after the main protest, camping, colombo is forcefully cleared by security forces in the early hours of friday morning demonstrates has said that they will not rest until there is a systemic change in the government. but on friday, an ally of the for president was appointed prime minister michelle fernandez has mormon from colombo. the irony is that not just finished in northern as prime

minister, but a little while later. we also had the new president swearing in his cabinet and almost every single face is the same, ah, save on one particular individual ali subway, who has sworn in as a foreign minister. now, most of obviously the cabinet then of being elected, being selected by the raj boxes. and even the new foreign minister happened to be the justice minis, son to go to bed roger boxer. and many reports indicate that he was on. it was also his person, a lawyer, so for protest as i don't know, you can see many of them behind me it's, it's quite dark now here in colombo. but there is still a clutch of protestors who are alongside the barricade, which kind of closes off the president's office. and that's what such a massive crackdown was deployed for this morning. i mean, what this sees, they don't want the same will seem all they want a sort of

a new culture. they want a system change, but this does not seem to be happening. run a vicar seeing how the new president basically saying he's the friend of the people and not the raj boxes. when challenged o asked yesterday. but given his actions, particularly in that violent crack down at 1 am this morning where you had hundreds of armed forces and a special police commandos, you know, sweeping everybody out of that area a violently assaulting them. it just seems that it's just the same old, just with a different name. at least 18 people were killed in a police raid on one of rio de janeiro is largest from dallas, lea, st most members of most from members of organized crime groups. police have been accused of brutality while the brazilian president, like in the operation to a cowboy movie. steve fan in a one time age former us president donald trump has been found guilty of contempt of congress. he defined a subpoena by a house committee investigating last year's riots on capitol hill. now faces up,

the tree is in jail and up to $200000.00 in fines. wild l. f organisation is described, the heat wave in europe is apocalyptic and cold, factional climate change 5 of bonds, or hundreds of thousands of hacked as of land across western europe. and at least 13 people have been killed and fighting between arm groups and libby as capital. tripoli, the special, the tearing force accused the presidential god of kidnapping their members. both groups are part of the government's fragile security process. the bottom line with steve clemens is coming out next. ah, me. hi, i'm steve clements, i have a question. how can donald trump and trump ism still have

a grip on so many americans, even as investigations, pain him as a leader who wanted himself to storm the u. s. capital and stop the peaceful transfer of power? let's get to the bottom line. ah, this week the congressional hearing tend to the events of january 6, 2021, wrap up their summer session. that was the day that hundreds of supporters of labor president donald trump, stormed congress in a last ditch effort to prevent his own vice president mike pence from certifying joe biden's election as president biden had one. but that hadn't stopped trump from claiming that the election was stolen and from encouraging his supporters to fight to overturn the result till this day. there are millions of americans out there who insist that donald trump one. they still attend his political rallies across the country, and he still has a grip on the republican party. and he might even run for president again. but does all this mean that americans no longer believe in their own institutions and democratic processes doesn't matter anymore or is winning?

the only thing that matters. today we're talking with a former republican political strategist who had a front row seat inside american politics for more than a decade. he is tim miller and he's just come out with a new book on his experiences. why we did it a travelogue from the republican road to hell. tim, thank you so much for joining us. i don't think there's a book on politics that i've read recently. that reminds me more of george or wells animal form of people who feel self entitled to go in and really detach themselves from the outcomes of that you write in your book. that 1st line american never would have gotten into this mess if it weren't for me. and my friends tell us why. thanks for having me, steve. the political culture in washington, but particularly in republican washington slowly, but surely over the period about the 20 years that i write about became increasingly nihilistic, increasingly focused only on winning over losing,

increasingly unconcerned about maintaining the democratic norms about governing for all voters. not just the people that voted for you and, and slowly overtime i think the nihilistic attitude both inflamed the base voters that we were, that we are campaigning to, and set the stage for somebody like donald trump, who was much better at all of this than the nerdy, d, v, political staffers to come and to channel the anger and the grievances of the republican voters and take over the party. and that's exactly what he did. and i think that everything that we saw on january 6th, you know, could have been predicted, of course, in 2008, the, our actions, you know, over that 14 year period. you know, very much lead directly to it. because we essentially created

a republican electorate that, that decided that they believed that this was necessary because they were made to believe that their fellow americans were evil. and the winning was more important than, than protecting the american institutions the american way of life. you know, i want our audience to, to try to have a leap of faith here and understand something that you wrote in the beginning. the book is one of the most interesting beginnings because you're very introspective. you're very honest. your writing is very wrong. and you talk about yourself in the ca, grey, you ran with as being political killers, that you were not really worried about principles or the health of democracy or, or, you know, who is the better candidate. you were out there to go for the juggler and to win, and i think that's an important dimension because i think as we talked you today and you, you are so reasonable and you come to a point of interest section in this that usually people who come out of jail or recently indicted do like michael cohen or something, but i just want people to understand the, the,

the real tension out there among some of the people you're writing about and about your own history. yeah. i was, i like everyone gets into politics almost everyone with a little bit of earnestness, right. i, you know, i bought in the young person into the shining city on the hill and can bis this god, the version of america, the republicans were selling. and you know, individual liberty and importance of that and free people. so i got into politics with, with some earnestness, but very quickly, you know, in washington, if you want to succeed, you have to become good at the game politics. going to fix it on the power on the campaign side, which is where i came out and event and slowly, the beneficiary very fast. you know, i determined that being a political hit man, being good at tearing down the left, being good at dropping, you know, negative pieces of information in the media. you know, being good at the way the ball and mart was more important than then actually telling the truth and actually getting candidates elected that were concerned about

serving the public 1st. and so, you know, this was the culture that was created and it was, i'm just going to be sick. i was pretty good. pretty good at a lady, one liner, right. i was really going to delivering a negative attack. and, and so you just start to not think about it and think about the ramifications and i have regrets about that because if you look at the politicians now, you know, all of these things and i criticized about political cultural lead to trump is still true on steroids, you know, if you're a ted cruz or marjorie taylor green, you know, you get more benefits from trolling and being mean and, and coming up with a funny tweet, you know, then you do from saying, okay, what's the solution that we can, we can get to how can we alleviate people's problems and, and you know, that is, i think the obvious endpoint of a culture that we created. so you go through the thing of talking to friends about

why they weren't able to see what you saw. and you believe that donald trump was deeply dangerous to the united states in its democracy. i'm just interested, as you look at this, you know, and you talk to these friends, what was going on in their mind, how have you organized and what, why are they not where you are either hateful reasons and i kind of lay out in the book a little bit of a field guide all their different rationalization. some of them are, are defensible. i think of wrong. you know, there are people that decide that they know that it's better to be on the inside billing side, right? dodging things, the right direction. if i leave a crazy burden, going to replace me. you know, there's some people who are middle aged kids are going to college like my career. what else am i going to do? you know, how am i going to change my life? that it's that easy. i think that's true, you know, then there are more selfish reasons, right? obviously, money power. but the thing that surprised me the most, that i think was,

was evident in my conversational caroline weekend, 7 hours drinking tequila, trying to get to the truth about this. and finally i just consider, is there anything that really drives you that is positive about the trump administration? and she thinks out of her 2nd and she's like, no, it's really all negative. i just, i'm so sick of the liberals drive in their presses and wagging their finger at me and drinking their coffee. a lot of out of their paper straws. and i'm thinking of this is crazy. you know, i don't like a paper straw, but who cares why, why you can vote for donald trump or the but, but i think something that i just didn't realize is, is what i felt was this game with his performative. we're going to attack the democrats and say they're socialists and evil. a lot of my colleagues internalized and really come to either believe it or use it as a justification for their actions. you know, there was one person interviewed who said to me, you know, tim, i just the way that the world left is that had their so crazy. but let me no choice

. but to go along with donald trump on just a few things that i agree with them on. i know that these dangers, i know that he's an idiot, but i have to do this because i've been, i felt like no choice that really, that is and that's a deeply broken mindset and a concerning mindset. and i fear that, that it is much broader than i that i had realized before i start doing these interviews. i'm just interested in, you know, the, the question of whether or not you're documenting on, right, which is a kind of obsession which you call it in a, you know, slight going off the tracks with donald trump is something you also see on the political left. i know that's not your job in this book, but you have a lot of experience with those on the left. yeah, my friend liz smith has a book out right now and so you can bring her on the left. she has the ability to the guys are but here's the, here's my assessment of there's been some concerning similarities and some important differences on the similarities in this culture of,

of demon ization that i talked about about how every day, you know, there's this complicit, mutually beneficial relationship between political and media, where every day you have to give something to me about, oh, here's a crazy thing the republican did today, or here's the crazy thing, this, this random conservative preachers that in tennessee today, like eventually, you know, that radical eyes and she bought radicalize his daughters into thinking that the old, the right is so evil that maybe we have to do anti democratic stuff in order to keep them out of power. i do worry a little bit about that happening on the left, obama to credit when he sort of emerged. you know, 8, it was really about unity. it was about kind of racial unity registered and boosted unity. i worry the next democratic obama would not be about unity, but would be about divisiveness and, and that could make the powder keg in our culture worse. so i worry about that a little bit less. i think there's some important differences. i think that liberal

media is much more policy oriented and less orient around that. we've kind of nihilistic trolling. then you see and conservative media. i think that the democratic voting base is just different categorically. it's much more diverse, both regionally diverse, but also more diverse by education level experience. and i think that korea has created some antibodies among kind of the left coalition. that makes it less likely to say all in lock step. we're going to go behind a strong man who wants to beat the other side, you know, because the people as that are part of the job i and goals and have much more, you know, a diverse viewpoints. so i, so i think that there's some concerning similarities, but some or differences want to show you this poll that we have, it's done my mom at the university and it kind of measures what americans think about whether or not they are political system is basically sound and what a report says from 1980, that number is falling from, from basically america be,

you know, thinking their system is basically sound from 62 percent. then to about 36 percent . if you want to be generous today. and that's a staggering drop that saying overwhelmingly, most americans across all parties don't trust the system therein. and i guess my question is, you've been in this, is there anything that gives you hope that that's a number that can be turned around or are we, you know, basically, as you said on and i'll stick course, no matter what, we're still on the road to hell and the subtitle no i this is not an optimistic book. really. it leaves people in that, in a, in a place that of a negative. i think i have a negative short term view of all this. i think it on the left, there's some legitimate concerns about the system. this is another key difference. right now we're dealing with what is essentially a tyranny of the minority where, where the republicans won the popular vote one time in the 21st century. and yet control the supreme court. you know, have a strangle hold on the senate because of the imbalance. and i think that

a lot of democrats are becoming very frustrated with that system. i think for good reasons that on the republican side, you have the voters are being lied to. and being told that there's massive voter fraud. and i actually sympathetic to the voters who continue to be told that there's a problem that there are countries being stolen from them. what do you expect them to think? so in order to change this trajectory, that one, we need republican leaders to be more responsible, stop lying to their own builders. and we need structural change in the way our democracy works to make people feel more more confident that it could, that it can. it works for them and it's just hard to see either of those 2 happening in the short term, you know, maybe in the medium term i think it hopefully the a young, the younger generation. you know, these are the core animating features of their activism. but, but i think that went for a little bit of a rocky road in the meantime. i'm just interested in what made you so different to look at donald trump as someone you are not ready to sign on to. when nearly

everyone else you worked with. either got out of the business or became an acolyte of his. yeah. all 2 things, i think the one, the big self criticism is i would have said to myself and 2012 is that you need to actually listen to the voters in republican republican politics and what they care about, what they're mad about. because a lot of what you're doing is really compartmentalizing and you're, you're wanting the party to move to a place that you want it to go. but now that the voters want to go in order to mollify them, you're feeding them, read, read about a bunch of b, s culture or nonsense. and i think they had to party maybe tried to address their legitimate grievances about that forever. wars for example, about, about their community thing, how it out because of trade. you know, maybe they would have turned to someone like trump is there felt like they're being hurt, maybe not. but i think that that's something that was worth trying that we didn't do. you know, and then, and then when the party goes awry, right, when, when we get overthrown by people who demand that the,

the culture war issues are put to the forefront. i think the, the main thing that separated me from my, my colleagues is 2 things. one is, i just was too far over my personal lines and i don't know exactly what was what made me that way. maybe my mother. but it's just kind of too far over my personal lives. i think another part of that is being a gay person with a family. i think that my capacity for entity was greater than some of i. and so my colleagues, i think that like donald trump's cruelty really hit me in more of a personal place where they came from more of a place, a privilege where more of a place of not that i'm not privilege but you know, did that they weren't impacted by it in any, in any real way. and so it became easy burned to compartmentalize his, his cruelty because it didn't the fact that it didn't affect their families but only affected other people out there in the country. and. and so i think that,

that i was in the hallway saved by the fact that i was gay and had that sort of broader view. you know, you name now aims. you talk to real people in this book and there are 3 women that you sort of tell stories about in this. and that you talk to elise, the phonic who's now very prominent member of congress, very big from support or didn't start out that way. you know, took on list jeannie and the role she had a list of farrah, warmer communications director of the white housework for mike pence, and also the secretary defense. and the 3rd is carolyn ren, who is also a big part of the trump operating machine, particularly in the finance area. can you just in a short form, tell us about the journey of the 3 women, all of whom you knew for a considerable period of time that went through different somersaults and who they became. yeah, it's funny, this shows you how little this is about policy and how much is that personal integrity and wound right. this book is alyssa barrel was the most conservative out of history when in by a wide margin. and you know, if you just look at the reviews of the policy checklist,

but she was the one who said enough, you know, she went along with trump a little too far for my taste way too far too. i to be honest. but at, during the start to feel stuff before january 6, she quit and she's, and she's stuck with it and i can not support someone that's going to undermine our democracy like this. and so i kind of explore what was the difference and what are the difference between these 3 women and, and basically it comes down to the least define. it was just blinded by ambition, just extremely moderate. but she saw her path of how it was through trump, and that she could overthrow this chaney was much more conservative than her. you know, as long as she went along with these nonsense conspiracies. and so her friends who interviewed are like what happened to her and i, and i tell them it's an uncomfortable truth. what happened to her is that is it is that she decided that she needed to lie for power. and the power was more important to her than these other traits. whereas alissa, you know, i think with able to kind of step back and have a broader view because she didn't have that same opportunity or the same interest

that listed. she's able to see. i don't want my kids to judge me for being part of this term being complicit in this and i care more about, you know, about doing the right thing that i do about one more rung up the ladder. and you know, i think caroline is a little bit in a different category because she's been really sucked in by the trunk called in a lot of ways. and so i think the lesson from these 3 stories i try to get at is that in order to pull people away from trump, we have to talk to them about things that are not just a policy checklist. it's about these broader values and broader principles. are there ways that we can, you know, look at our own integrity and look at our own choices and make choices that, that, that in the future aren't as aren't dangerous. and i think this is the only kind of optimistic model that i present for that. and she's a really a start contracts from a lease. in particular, we're right near the end of the leaf, this phase of the january 6 hearings. and if we learned anything from those

hearings, in my view, it is that the distance between the present, the united states and what was going on amongst those protestors who rated and attacked us. capitol was nil, that the president wanted to actually storm the capital with them, according to reports from, from those hearings. i'm interested in what you think about this moment because i think the nightmare, some people have is we can have all of this play out. we can see people who may have lied or, or fudge the truth. we may have had direct presidential and white house involved in helping to stir this up. and to, you know, in the cases it could have led to the greater numbers of depths than we already had there. and the american, at least one big part of the american public might not care. they may still want donald trump as the leader of this country. i'm just interested in your thoughts on that. yes,

this is where we come back is like the leadership and choices do matter. i dug history is contingent, is this stuff is not inevitable. and when, you know, we were learning more from the january 6 committee, but it was clear in the downs complicit in this. i'm in the 8 of january 6. lindsey graham admitted it, you know, mitch mcconnell admitted it. and so these guys had the courage to vote, to convict in the senate on the 2nd impeachment, then we wouldn't be here anymore. and right away, the republican party would be in a better, better position. you know, they could have just been ready to move under ron de santis, or mike comes or whoever. and so i just think that this is such a like what we're learning just reveals these questions that are in the heart of projecting our democracy are about, about individual integrity, individual choices and, and, and separating ourselves from this really kind of debased like tribal culture. of washed in dc and recognizing that, you know, sometimes you have to take some short term political risk to do the right thing to

make change. look at what just happened in the u. k. how they over through boris johnson. that is what is required here. and the only people unfortunately can do it, or the republican leaders and i think to put this on, voters is wrong. like a lot of a lot of the voters believe it. they leave virginia where they've been lied to. and so we don't exactly know what they would think about our democracy. if leaders had stood up and done the right. now, you know, remind our audience, you know, donald trump did tweet out on in mid december. be there, you know, will be wild for knowledge. essentially, or at least for stirring up of the the mix. but it just just raises this interesting question as we look forward to the solvency of the system as we look forward to the next thing. is there a place in the republican party any more for people like yourself for this genie and adam kinsey or other people that were part of what you put together in the lincoln project with steve schmidt and others people. and i don't even know if

you're still friends with the folks, but you helped drive at least a big portion of the never trump republican movement. is that movement? have any future or is it, has it fizzled out? yeah. i did republican voters against drunk, which is a different thing. i can project that the product. okay. we're all allies in an effort to, to stop the algebra. no, i don't. right now. i don't think there's a place to the never come to the republican party, maybe there will be in the future for some, for some of us. but, you know, i love to party in november. i think that there is, has to be abroad pro democracy coalition, right. now that extends from people who are more to the left of us and i think they have to be, are demonstrating that were willing to make sacrifices for that on various policy things. i hope people on the left are as well, you know, in order to deal with the grave threat. and, and i think that into my point about alyssa and elise, this is not about policy differences right now. like this is about,

are you willing to go along and continue humoring a madman who wanted to end our democracy in and put in place a donald trump talk or see are you not? and if you're not than right now, even if you disagree with your maintenance and policies, your part of the job ivanhoe allision. and that's my view and, and maybe that'll change when down terms of the stage. i don't have a crystal ball that, that now for now, i just, i think it was genie and adam kids are the last stand. and unfortunately she's about to lose her primary and he's going to retire from congress. and unfortunately, we might have to fight the site again into in 2024. trump runs again as it seems like he will. well, tim miller, former republican strategist, an author of why we did it a travelogue from the republican road to hell, really appreciate your candor. and thanks for being with us today. so what's the bottom line? american democracy is going through one of its strangest periods ever. millions of americans simply don't believe that joe biden is the president. if you ask them for proof, they don't have any, but they've got that gut feeling,

conspiracies fly around, and no 2 americans can agree on anything, whether it's immigration, abortion, sexuality, and identity. you name it, it doesn't even matter if the january 6 commission finds it, donald trump failed to uphold the constitution and was willing to do just about anything to stay in power. folks have already made up their minds, end of discussion, and things are not going to get much better. the enablers that my guess talks about are ready for the next gravy train, whether it's the trump train or any other populous candidate. the promise is to pull the country back from moderates and progressives in today's america, winning elections is what's important not uniting or healing the country way. let me be clear that isn't the way things should be, but it's where we are now. america's democracy may be hanging on by only a few threads and that's the bottom line. ah,

a ah safe that mm hm. and then international anti corruption excellence award boat. now for your hero.