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- [00:00]
A
I think we're in a world of Trump, and I think he's a singular figure, and I think he'll be gone eventually. He'll be gone. Nobody lives forever, and then something else will happen.
- [00:15]
B
Welcome to How To Fix It. I'm John Avlon, and this is what might be called a very special episode. It is a real pleasure to welcome onto the show for the first time my bride, Margaret Hoover, who is the host of Firing Line with Margaret Hoover on PBS about to enter its ninth season. More importantly, we share our lives and two wonderful children, and we're gonna have a fun conversation. Normally, she interviews me on stage sometimes, sometimes we're on air together. But this is gonna flip the script a little bit, and we're gonna have fun. Margaret. Hello, babe, how you doing?
- [00:54]
A
This is gonna be flipping the script because as I teased you earlier, you're gonna have to listen to me. Oh.
- [01:00]
B
Ow. That left work.
- [01:02]
A
I was like, you're gonna listen to me. If you interview me, that'll be so great.
- [01:06]
B
I am, I am. Because I'm always interested in what you have to say. I love you. I signed up to spend my whole life listening and having a conversation with you. But we're gonna do a little bit of big picture. We're gonna hit a lot of different topics and. But first we gotta talk about Ken Pax, lacking John Cornyn in the Texas Republican primary. I should say, you are a Republican. You revived the famous William F. Buckley show. But man, a guy who is just as corrupt as can be getting a 2 to 1 margin in Texas, what does that say to you about what's going on inside the GOP and the future of your party?
- [01:42]
A
I have stopped predicting the future of the Republican Party. I wrote what I thought was really a seminal deepthink book for a broad audience in 2011 called how a New Generation of Conservatives Can Save the Republican Party. And it was like, you know, it's like really original, deep thinking, like, you know, how Republicans should be first same sex marriage and how, like, we should be pro choice and how we should have some climate change, you know, just like get our head around climate change to really figure out, you know, some free market ways to address it. Cap and trade, I don't go figure. Immigration, healthcare, you know, like, talk to all the top hot policy issues about how the party should go. And in fact, the party, even a couple years later, released an autopsy report which essentially said the same thing. And, you know, I was interviewed for part of that and they, of course, the party took that advice and now we are here we are with a modern Republican Party that is consistent with the principles of modern American conservatism. Free markets, allies, strong leadership in the world, thoughtful immigration policy that addresses economic needs but also secures the border. Oh, wait, we don't have any of that. So after that experience, it was great to plant a flag in the sand and to say what you believe. And I was a commentator at Fox News at that point, and I felt like I just kept getting put in a Republican widget. And I didn't feel like I was a little bit more heterodox than just the blonde Republican widget. And so it was an important exercise for me. I was glad to plant the flag. It's just not where the party's gone. And what I recognize is people with ideas they think are resonant and electable aren't the people who decide what's electable. So I don't know what's going to happen with the future of the Republican Party. What I do know is Donald Trump completely owns the primary process and owns the party. There's been just a complete and total co opting. But that's like, also not new. We know that. We absolutely knew that. So there's actually like kind of nothing new in the story of Paxton. So, like trouncing John Cornet. I mean, I sat myself down and watched John Cornyn's, you know, when he came out to give his concession speech and talk about a class act. I mean, he said, this is where I think partisan gets the better of us better, like too much the better of us. But he said, look, I'm a party man. I've always supported the Republican Party and I will be supporting, you know, Ken Paxton for this seat. And I've had, you know, 40 some on, you know, for some odd decades of service. And I've tried to serve the people of Texas, but I never think I'm smarter than they are. And I mean, he was very humble and like completely a team player and doing the exact opposite of what Trump had done to him, which was just completely run all over him. And I think it's a sign of somebody with dignity and respect. But I think it's also what I see over and over and over again is the electeds at the highest levels and the appointees at the highest levels don't understand how fully corrupted the whole process has become until they interact with it head on and then they either go quietly into the night or, you know, they have a seat in the peanut gallery on cable news. But they're not actually in the bowels of policy and the important places where decisions are being made about the future of our country.
- [05:09]
B
Just to dig deeper, I mean, this was a 2 to 1 win, I think you pointed out. I mean, it's more than that.
- [05:15]
A
I mean, it was a total trouncing. It just. There was like, John Cornyn had no hope. There was one, the only county he won. I can't even figure it out. It was like down in the. I don't know, Texas well, my mom's from Fort Worth, but like, you know, different part of the state. Down on the coast, sort of close to Galveston, but further south, there was like a county where he won and there were only eight votes in the county, and that was it. That's the only county in all of Texas that John Cornyn won. It's like all his family lives there or something. Like it's his family ranch, I don't know. But, yeah, no, it's a complete trouncing. And also, Cornyn had, in the context of the corrupted Republican Party, corrupted by Trump. Cornyn had been one of the guys who had, I'm sure, in his telling of his own narrative to himself, tried to collaborate with Trump as much as he thought he politically needed to and yet stand up to Trump in places where he felt it was important in order to be able to look himself in the mirror. And I'm sure that he is the kind of person who has had that kind of conversation with himself because he had taken some steps with respect to immigration, with respect. Nothing like Liz Cheney, nothing like Adam Kinzinger. But like, you know, I think we're, we're dealing with a different kind of spectrum of compliance. And to Trump, with a lot of these longtime senators who, you know, they survived the Tea Party. They, you know, he's been there 40 years, right? Like, they'd seen changes come and they just hadn't seen things change as much. Look, what I also know about the future of the Republican Party is that, and I take this line from you, John Avalon, like, you always have to see things with a sense of perspective and history. And so, like you often do to comfort yourself in these trying times, I also look at more recent history. The Republican Party is basically over in 1974, right? Like Nixon resigns, the Watergate has happened. Corruption at levels that have never been exposed before to the American public through mass media and around the world have been exposed, and the Republican Party's over. And Jimmy Carter comes in, and in six years, Jimmy comes in two years later. Ford chooses not to run. Jimmy Carter comes in. Jimmy Carter's presidency is widely viewed as a disaster. And a man who hadn't been in elected politics for 16 years, who had previously been the governor of California, changes the trajectory of the west for the next. For the beginning of the next century. So. And that, and that remakes the Republican Party. And by the way, none of the Reagan Republican types liked the Nixon people. Like, the Nixon people were good riddance, except for, like, the really, you know, political operative slushy types who always stick around, like, the, like the George W. Bush White House people who are all, like, in the back halls of the Trump White House. So look, you know, like, anything can happen. And like, I wish the vicissitudes of, and the ebb and flow of, of American politics and Republican politics and Democratic politics, like, we're vastly more principled and we're, you know, but the fact is, like, politics, like, washes over us, and it, like, it comes and goes, it ebbs and flows. This is. I don't, I do not believe we're fundamentally in, like, a world of Trumpism. I think we're in a world of Trump, and I think, I think he's a singular figure, and I think he'll be gone eventually. He'll be gone. Nobody lives forever. And then something else will happen, and I just pray it's something that is more fruitful and constructive and better for the country and for the world.
- [08:59]
B
So you're saying there's a chance?
- [09:01]
A
No, I'm not really hanging my hat
- [09:03]
B
on that, but I mean, I just want to belabor this one point. I mean, here is. This is George W. Bush's home state.