Robert Draper on New Book “Weapons of Mass Delusion”

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: Now, there’s a good deal of dysfunction in American politics right now too. And many ask, what is the future of the Republican Party? With the majority of Republican candidates having either express doubt about the legitimacy of the 2020 election or rejected its result outright. These are candidates, of course, in the midterms. Author and journalist, Robert Draper, examines how this sector of the GOP challenges American democracy itself. He discussed in his new book called, “Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind”. And he told Michel Martin what lies ahead.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Robert Draper, thank you so much for talking with us.

ROBERT DRAPER, AUTHOR, “WEAPONS OF MASS DELUSION” AND CONTRIBUTOR, NYT MAGAZINE: It’s truly a pleasure to be on. Thanks for having me, Michel.

MARTIN: So, your book covers the 18 months that took place since January 6th. And you say it represents the pivot point between, this is not normal, and, this is dangerous and not going away. Would you say more about that?

DRAPER: Sure. And directly on the heels of January the 6th, the thinking was, the Republican Party is surely going to reckon with itself, realize that it had arguably egged on this insurrection. And would almost certainly descend into a kind of penitent meditation saying, wow, you know, we don’t want to go this way. Instead, the party doubled down and really became an obliging host body for some of the most radical elements in America spewing disinformation and using rhetoric that was increasingly violent.

MARTIN: And what made you decide to focus on this? I mean, was the seat of that planted on January 6th, when you said yourself, I have to see what happens next or was there something else that made you think, this is what I need to do. This is where I need to vote.

DRAPER: The morning of January the 6th, 2021, was the game-changer for me. It’s when I realized, you know, the party I’m writing about is altogether different from the party that I’m seeing. And then in the weeks and months to follow, to see that both in the impeachment hearings and after that far from going away, Donald Trump has holed over the Republican Party, became manifest. And that, you know, became especially clear when tracing the trajectory of some of the right-wing characters like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Lauren Boebert, and others. But in the broadest sense, what was happening was that people who, by any ordinary reckoning, you would figure, would be marginal characters, really came to be dominant characters in terms of the party’s message and the party’s behavior.

MARTIN: You know, it’s hard to pick out one of these figures to, kind of, focus in on because there are so many stories in your book. Like, I’m thinking about Paul Gosar, for example, who had arguably, you know, one of the first public events that became January 6th. I mean, kind of this argument that the election was stolen and that there’s got to be some kind of, you know, confrontation to address it. And even during the, sort of, the mob attack on the Capitol, was saying, yes, you know. This is not — these aren’t our people. No big deal here. Nothing to see. I mean, I’m just so puzzled by that because to think that he was so well-known that he would not have been a target. Mobs have no logic, you know? Mobs are not rational actors thinking you, but not you. That’s not how it works.

DRAPER: Right. I’m glad you brought up Paul Gosar, who, I began the book with. And Gosar became, you know, the first to lead the charge with this so-called stop the steal rallies in Arizona. He was the first, joined with Senator Ted Cruz, to protest the certification of the election. And so, this guy who seemed to be a fringe character became rather central. There is another reason also why I focused on Gosar, and that’s because, you know, when you ask yourself, sort of, OK. Let’s assume, for example, that the Republicans take back the House and they become, you know — and maybe even the Senate. And they’re running the legislative branch. What will they do with that power? Well, Gosar is a guy who actually, when he looks at himself in the mirror, he’s a serious legislator. And he actually does want to get certain things done, including critical infrastructure projects in Arizona and all that. The problem with Gosar is that he’s viewed as such a reprehensible character by Democrats and even people in his own party, that they won’t work with the guy. I mean, Gosar, for example, you know, as I mentioned in the book, refuses to call Joe Biden, President Biden because he does not recognize his legitimacy. And Democrats have told me, including Democrats who are inclined otherwise to work with a guy like Gosar, that look, you know, I’m not going to try to have as a co-sponsor for my bill a guy who won’t call, you know, our leader, President Biden. I can’t expect Democrats to sign on to a bill that has a guy’s name on as a co-sponsored, it can’t happen. So, this is the conundrum that the Republican Party faces, you know, going forward. How to be kind of political performance artist for the right on the one hand, and to try to govern on the other.

MARTIN: A figure like him presents the problem for journalists, like us. Because in order to report on some of the most outrageous and disgusting things he says, you have to repeat them.

DRAPER: Right.

MARTIN: And then, you are continuing to put this stuff in the public domain. And so — right?

DRAPER: You are right. That’s a dilemma we all face.

MARTIN: That’s a conundrum.

DRAPER: Right. It is, it is. And so, you know — so, you know — and Gosar definitely has put us on the horns of that dilemma because he said some incredibly, you know, obnoxious things and the anime that he posted of a cartoon character version of himself slaying President Biden and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He said it was just a joke, but, you know, that stuff goes into the ecosystem and it creates a permission structure for the electorate on the right to believe that it’s OK to view this as a kind of, you know, holy war, where the right are a bunch of heroes and the super villains are people on the left. So, that’s — you know, that’s part of it. The other part too, and I realize that, you know, it’s a question I get a lot of, should we even be giving any attention at all to people like Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz? Because that’s all they want. They just want attention. And if you don’t give them attention, they will go away. Unfortunately, that is not true. It’s — they’ve become people of influence, not because they do great committee work or something like that, or even, in Gosar and Greene’s case, sit on committees, but because they represent the MAGA base, the Trumpian base that has now become the central gravitational force within the Republican Party. And that doesn’t change by us refusing to cover them.

MARTIN: So, let’s talk about, speaking of, you know, permission structure, you know, and people of influence, we have to talk about Marjorie Taylor Greene.

DRAPER: OK.

MARTIN: You say that the evolution of her popularity is basically a case study in GOP politics in the Trump era. So, Marjorie Taylor Greene, like Paul Gosar, stripped of committee assignments, basically has a lot of time on her hands and is basically known for being a provocateur. So, tell us about her. How did she get started in politics?

DRAPER: Sure, sure. Greene was a co-owner, with her husband, of the family construction firm in Georgia. Owned — co-owned a cross fit gym and otherwise, viewed herself as a homemaker all the way up until 2019 when she decided to run for office. And she caught a lucky break. The district that she was running in, the Sixth District of Georgia, she was probably going to lose either in the primary or in the general election, but then, a new district opened up. You know, much more conservative area of Northwest Georgia. She moved over to there and immediately styled herself as the Trumpiest of candidate that played very, very well there. And she showed up to Washington as someone with this QAnon past and with all these other, you know, offensive social media posts. And the basic view was, this is someone who’s going nowhere in a hurry. Then, as you reference, Michel, just one month into her tenure as a congresswoman, she was stripped of her committee assignments by the Democrats after more offensive social media posts from her recent past had surfaced. And at that point, yes, the view, and certainly for me covering it at this juncture of the Republican Party, I figured, you know, this is worth, you know, maybe a few pages. But otherwise, Greene is a person of no importance. And yet, in that first fiscal quarter, she outraised, like, every Republican on the hill. In her first year, she was the fourth highest fund-raiser of Republican house members, eclipse only by two of the leaders, Minority Scalise and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, as well as Dan Crenshaw. That’s a phenomenal achievement for a freshman, of any stripe. On top of which, she, you know, has this vast social media following. But the most critical thing is that because she’s loyal to Trump, and Trump loves Greene, Kevin McCarthy wants to be speaker has kept her close because he believes that he cannot be speaker unless he caters to basically Trump and the people who worship Trump. So, Greene wants to reach — or has become a person of real, not just interest, but influence. And so, for those people who are asking themselves the question, where is the Republican Party going? She’s no longer a person who we all thought would be sitting at the “Star Wars” bar of political rejects. She’s one of the most important people in the Republican Party, like it or not.

MARTIN: So, talk to me about, what is the through line here of the folks that you profile? I mean, I think that people sort of see these people as basically hecklers with jobs in Congress.

DRAPER: Yes.

MARTIN: Because they’re not really interested in legislating. What is their interest? Like what’s the truth here?

DRAPER: So, two parts to that. What are they really trying to do here? Greene, for example, has listed a whole consolation of those to me. I mean, she wants to finish the wall that Trump started, she wants a four-year moratorium on immigration, of any kind, she wants to repeal gun safety laws, she wants to repeal any laws that attempt to address climate change. She — I mean, there’s — you know, she wants a nationwide ban on abortion. So, you know, there are plenty of things she stands for. It’s a different question whether they accomplish those, whether they are capable of governing. Now, what’s the through line of all of them? The through line, I would put distinctly, is that they are the title of the book. They are the weapons of mass delusion. And what I mean by that is that they have promulgated disinformation that has now swallowed whole by tens of millions of Americans who happen to be Republicans. And obviously, chief among those is that the 2020 election was stolen. But it doesn’t end there. It’s also that, you know, the whole Russia thing was a hoax, the January 6th was variously a nothing burger or a setup or something instigated by antifa. It was that the COVID vaccines, at minimum, are ineffectual and at maximum are killers. That the mainstream media habitually lies and is in collusion with, you know, the deep state. And it is that the Democrats are not just liberals, not even just socialists, but that the communists. These are, you know, seemingly, you know, social media memes promulgated ceaselessly by Gosar, Greene, Madison Cawthorn, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz and others, that nonetheless have become gospel for tens of millions of people.

MARTIN: So, now, the question becomes, what about all the other people who are not so taken with these bizarre conspiracies, many of which are rooted in anti-Semitism and racism and, you know, all the other things? So, what about that? Where are they in this?

DRAPER: Yes. I mean, my book basically deals with three different types of Republicans. The first are the weapons of mass delusion type of Republicans that you and I have just been talking about. The second are the very notably small handful of Republicans who have stood up to those spreaders of mass delusion. Most notably, Liz Cheney, and played often in political price for doing so. The much larger swath of Republicans, the third category, are those who you are referencing, Michel, who don’t subscribe, you know, to these crazy views, but recognize that a lot of their voters do, and they are scared of them. They — and the rationale that they have said over and over, not just to me, but to some Democratic officeholders who they are friends with, that, look, you know, I know you want me to denounce, you know, Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar. If I do that, I’m going to get primaried. And if I get primaried, I’m probably going to lose. And if I lose, the person who comes to Capitol Hill, you’re not going to like that person. That person is going to be, you know, Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene on steroids. And so, you will thank me later that I’m going to ground now and being quiet about all of this. The problem with this scenario, which I think is an understandable scenario, a conundrum that a lot of Republicans face, is that but then, how does all this end? You know, what’s — how do they foresee a scenario in which tens of millions of Americans who have swallowed whole the lie that the 2020 election was stolen wake up one day and decide, man, that’s not true, or that’s not important to me?

MARTIN: What happened to the Democrats? Why are they so ineffectual in dealing with this phenomenon?

DRAPER: Sure. Well, I mean, part of it is, as you well know, Michel, that we are in a moment in time — we are in a particular election cycle that historically favors the party out of power, right? I mean, so, the midterms of 2022 tend to be a referendum on the sitting president and they tend to result in a kind of check on that president by the opposition party picking up seats. And so, that’s part of the headwind, historically, that the Democrats face. But the other part is that the Democrats, you know, they’re trying to push certain issues that are not top of lying to voters. And I’m not casting judgment on them for doing so, I’m just stating it as a fact. We’ve seen in public opinion polls that uppermost in the electorate’s mind is not these states vis-a-vis American democracy, but instead, inflation and the economy. And democracy and voting rights are well down the list, and you can’t blame the Democrats for talking about that stuff, but it’s also not utterly surprising that the electorate is responding more in terms of pocketbook issues. Obviously, Republican voters and maybe some independents, we shall see on November the 8th, are the view that OK, you know, Herschel Walker, very imperfect candidate, you know, may well have, you know, paid for an abortion. But he will be perhaps a deciding vote on matters near and dear to us. We have seen this kind of Faustian bargain, of course, take place with the evangelicals and Donald Trump, who, you know, on his face, not exactly the most appealing candidate. It would seem to be the evangelicals, now they’ve utterly embracing him because he gave them what they wanted. And if Herschel Walker manages to cast deciding votes, then they really have just chosen not to care about his past.

MARTIN: And what about the former president, who — or once and possibly future president, Donald Trump, what role does he play in this? Does this movement even need him anymore?

DRAPER: No, he’s certainly the galvanizing force and the catalyst, Michel. But I think you’ve, in a way, answered your own question. No, I don’t think the movement requires him anymore because he has shown the Republican Party a new way. You know, you will recall that after Romney lost to Obama in 2012, that the Republican Party, led by its national committee and its chairman rights previous, wrote this growth and opportunity project that was basically about expanding the tent to attract more voters. Well, Trump essentially said to the Republican Party, you don’t need to do that. It’s too hard to persuade people who don’t like you to like you. It’s much easier to persuade people who like you, to love you. And that to demonize the other side in an effort to get the people who love you to turn out, maybe suppress the other side, to suppress their vote. And most of all, if all that fails, if that doesn’t work out, and you lose, claim you won and they stole it from you, you know? That’s the formula that Trump has now laid out. We’ve already seen, you know, that being — you know, we’ve heard, you know, Kari Lake, the gubernatorial candidate for Arizona refuse to say that she will concede the race if she loses. Many other Republicans are saying that as well. They’re taking their cues from Trump, but they don’t need Trump anymore. He has created a new and dangerous path that many Republicans are following.

MARTIN: Robert Draper, thank you so much for talking with us.

DRAPER: It’s really a pleasure, thanks for having me, Michel.