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- [00:00]
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- [00:30]
Charlie Sykes
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Thomson Reuters Announcer
Start now.
- [00:57]
Grow Therapy / Michaels Advertiser
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- [02:02]
Charlie Sykes
I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome back to the to the Contrary podcast. Today we're going to do something different. I'm talking about a new book called Killing Baby Hitler by Michael Tomasky who is the editor of New Republic. And trust me, you may think, you know what kind of a book this is. This is not the book you think it is at all. And joining me on our podcast today to talk about this and a lot of other things, Michael Tomaski, the author of the new book Killing Baby Hitler, the editor of the New Republic and Michael, I hope that when I say this is not at all the book you expected to be. I hope you regard that as flattering. It's just it was a big surprise. I mean you're like a political guy, right? You're a political pundit. I Wasn't expecting something this searing and hilarious and funny and thought provoking. So I hope you regard that as a positive comment.
- [02:54]
Michael Tomasky
Oh, 100%. Thank you, Charlie, and thanks for having me on. And that's, you know, that's exactly the reaction that I'm looking for from people that, you know, people who. Well, first of all, there's millions of people out there who've never heard of Michael Tomaski, so maybe they just see it in the bookstore and think it looks interesting or like the COVID But then among those people who have heard of me and who may have read my work, I hope to them it's kind of surprising, and they kind of open it and read 20 pages, say, Gee, this. This is not the Tomasky I know from. From his political country. This is this kind of. So, yes, that's. That's exactly the reaction I'm hoping for.
- [03:33]
Charlie Sykes
You know, so it takes place in the future, and yet it feels very, very contemporary. You know, the world is divided up into these billion. How you describe the billionaire hamlets here? The. So you have, you know, places like. The world's divided. Trump won Thiel 2. I think there's Bezos 1 and Bezos 2. There's something named after Barron Trump. So there is that. So you basically bend the genres, right? I was trying to describe this to somebody and saying, okay, it's sci fi, but it's also really biting political satire. And so you kind of flipped between the genres there, didn't you?
- [04:16]
Michael Tomasky
Yes, yeah, it is. People have told me that it's that, and people have compared it, and I'm quite flattered by this, obviously, to Kurt Vonnegut. I wasn't even conscious of Vonnegut while I was writing it because I've read like three Kurt Vonnegut novels maybe, but it's been decades, so I wasn't trying to channel Kurt Vonnegut or anything. But now that people mentioned it, yeah, it's like, you know, he combined sci fi and political satire in a way that this book also sort of does. But I also think it's. It. You know, as I told somebody, it's set in 2141 and 1889, but it's really kind of about now.
- [05:05]
Charlie Sykes
Yes, this is the funny part. As you go back and forth and, you know, we think things are a. But Your vision of 2141 is very, very dystopian. And quite frankly, one of the things that it made me do was start to think in longer time zones, because I think we get trapped. And I think, you know, What I mean, we get trapped in the news cycles, looking in the short term or even thinking in terms of like the next election. And I think one of the disturbing things is realize there's like multiple, multiple elections and things really still turn out pretty awful. It's, you know, they, whether it's. And some of the forces in history are not contingent on who wins the election. Climate change, technological. But let me give people, give a taste of this. And here's was my big question I wanted to ask you when I was reading the book, like, when did you write this book? When did you think of writing this book? And it was, it was in 2022, before, in a much more innocent era. Before Trump 2.0. Right. So just tell me how you came up with the idea of writing this book in sort of the inner, the Trump inner Regnum.
- [06:13]
Michael Tomasky
Well, it just popped into my head one morning while I was exercising. And you know, killing Baby Hitler is obviously not original to me. It's a thought experiment that a lot of people have played around with. And I guess maybe the night before I was just watching some Hitler documentary or something and I started thinking about the question and, and I started thinking about writing about it and its comic potential. So that's really, that was late 2022. So my New Year's resolution to myself for 2023 was start writing on New Year's Day. I really had no idea what path the action of the novel was going to take, but I said, just sit down, write 300 words, just get it started. And I did that. And so I wrote it over the course of 2023 and 2024, while Joe Biden was still the president before, as you say, Trump 2.0. And I was attempting to write an exaggerated version of the reality that you and I are living through and that I comment on and that you comment on so, so well. And but boy, by the time the book has come out in 2026, it's less exaggerated than it was when I was putting it.
- [07:39]
Charlie Sykes
Well, let me give you an example of this. And I'm sure you've been asked about this many, many times because I remember, I think I was on an airplane, was reading the one section where you're talking about how Republicans decide to raze, destroy the Lincoln Memorial and instead build the Nathan Bedford Forrest mixed martial arena in its place. And of course, you wrote that years before we had the mixed martial arts thing at the White House. What was your reaction to that? Because you couldn't possibly have imagined that that would actually be Repression. I mean, that was one of those over the top things, right? Mixed martial arts at the Lincoln Memorial. No, wait, hold my beer. Mixed martial arts at the White House itself. What was that like?
- [08:24]
Michael Tomasky
Yeah, I mean, I'm glad you noticed that and remembered that based on where that appears in the book, I must have written that in the first half of 2023. So it popped into my head a long time ago. I remember sitting and writing that sentence, and the sentence originally just referred to them tearing down the Lincoln Memorial and, you know, period. And then I thought, I stared at it and I thought, well, wait a second, let's juice this up and make it a little funnier and make it a little more absurd. And that's where I came up with the Nathan Bedford Forrest Mixed Martial Arts Center. Turns out not to be that absurd, I guess.
- [09:04]
Charlie Sykes
Well, also, you described this billionaire oligarchy in the future where the United States breaks up and billionaires control and tech billionaires control everything. And this, of course, was before we had the Trump inauguration, where one billionaire after another bent the knee, the rise of Elon Musk Musk and all of these folks. So at some level, you saw that coming as well, that we were, you know, that democracy was going to be shoved aside by this dystopian oligarchy. And that feels very timely at the moment.
- [09:40]
Michael Tomasky
Yeah, well, I'm sad to say it feels much more timely than it did when I was writing it. And, you know, when I was writing this, Charlie, 2023, certainly during 2023, I kind of thought Joe Biden was going to get reelected into 2024. That became more of a question mark, of course. But, you know, I thought about, I mean, there's a section in the novel, it's about a 12 or 13 page section that walks through the breakup of the United States over the course of the 2440s, 2050s, and 2000s. And I thought a lot about how to handle that. And I had to write it in such a way that the outcome of the 2024 election that would be live and plausible no matter how the 2024 election turned out. But, yeah, I have to say, you know, I didn't think Donald Trump was going to get returned to the White House. So, you know, I had no idea that this picture of oligarchic control of the country and the planet was going to feel so, you know, tangible, immediate.
- [10:57]
Charlie Sykes
And yet clearly you saw these larger historical trends at work to, you know, to project out to 2141, to see, you know, one election after another and how democracy falls apart and democracy falls apart because nobody can agree on the integrity of elections, who wins elections. And I have to say that having this conversation the morning after Donald Trump's election conspiracy theory speech, it is a reminder, or at least you obviously recognize how fragile all of these things were, that the United States was not necessarily destined to hold together, that democracy was not, you know, had not reached an end point. So you obviously saw that even before Donald Trump returned to power.
- [11:49]
Michael Tomasky
I think you and I are round about the same age. I grew up a liberal, you grew up a conservative. But even with that, I believe we shared certain presumptions about Democratic small D and Republican small R life in this country and on this planet. Those assumptions have been smashed to dust. And, you know, we grew up, I'm sure you grew up thinking, as I did, that we had democracy for all its flaws and for all its problems, was the best or as Winston Churchill said, the least worst way to organize society. And I never imagined that we would, as a society retreat from that, but we have. And so, you know, that's really one of the big questions that the book tries to explore. And that's what has happened fundamentally in my novel. By 2141, a critical mass of leaders and people have decided that democracy is not any kind of apotheosis, that democracy was merely another stage in human development and that the stage that is better than democracy is a stage where the superior people have more rights and get more.
- [13:22]
Charlie Sykes
But that's one. Is that one of the big turning points historically in your dystopian vision of the future? The turning point is when there is this, what do they call it? The great Enlightenment. What was the phrase?
- [13:35]
Michael Tomasky
The enlightening.
- [13:37]
Charlie Sykes
The enlightening where they discover that no, we're actually not equal, that some people are superior to other people. We shouldn't have equal rights. And this becomes the new populist, anti populist message. And again, when you were writing this, it might have seemed a little satirical, but listening to the Stephen Millers and even the JD Vance's and some of the post liberal Right, it now seems more and more plausible that you will have. Yeah, you know, in many ways what you're describing, the enlightening, feels like much of the backlash against Wokeism. Were you thinking in those terms?
- [14:15]
Michael Tomasky
Yeah, I was. And you know, there are plenty of people around today who say these things, not just in the political world, but like, you know, this guy Curtis Yarvin, whom I'm sure you know and your listeners know, says this stuff openly, and Peter Thiel says things like this openly. So I just took it an imaginative literary step further to a point where there's an actual broad movement afoot in the United States or the former United States and the world at large, where there is an explicit inequality movement, where people say, no, we don't. We're not born equal and we should not have equal rights. Some should have more rights than others. So that's part of what's going on in my novel in the world in 2141.
- [15:11]
Charlie Sykes
So I definitely do not want to have any spoiler alerts, but obviously the title Killing Baby Hitler, they go back and do you have some interesting. Without giving away anything, but some interesting meditations on historical hindsight and whether or not we can actually change history. So talk to me a little bit about that, because that always is kind of the fantasy that, you know, what if Spartacus had had a Piper Cub? What if we could have killed Baby Hitler? What if any of these things. What if you had a Nautilus submarine during the War of 1812? So just talk to me about that because it is a fun experiment, because once you change one thing, you change so many other things, right?
- [15:56]
Michael Tomasky
Yeah. And, you know, that's obviously kind of at the heart of this, and I had a lot of fun with writing that aspect of it. I will say this much, and I've said this much in other interviews. So these two scientists from 2141 go back to 1889, Austria, when Adolf Hitler was a little baby, and they attempt to kill him. They don't succeed. They botch the job. However, they do change both the trajectory of his life such that he does not become the Adolf Hitler who we all know and hate. And thereby they change the course of history. And certain things happen the same way. A lot of things happen quite differently. Some things are for the better, a few things are for the worse. So they changed the course of history. But what you can't change is human nature. And you can't change the fact that we're not always very good to one another. And so that still happens.
- [17:00]
Charlie Sykes
So you also talk about, I mean, obviously in the beginning of the book, the role of artificial intelligence and the fact that we have these Philo assistants. How did you come up with the term philo, by the way, to describe these AI assistants?
- [17:17]
Michael Tomasky
I don't remember. I had a reason at the time. It's a Greek root for something, maybe. But I'd better go back and bone up on that, because you're not the first person to ask.
- [17:27]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, but you know, it really does raise the question of our reliance on AI. I mean, we're seeing all of these debates now and even legislation dealing with the fact that there are millions of people who are becoming intimately involved emotionally with AI people and how AI is going to change the world. In fact, it's AI that solves the mystery of time travel. So talk to me a little bit about your portrayal of the future of artificial intelligence and what our lives are going to be like.
- [18:06]
Michael Tomasky
You know, I felt an obligation tugging at me to go deeper into all that than I actually did in the novel. There's a passing reference at one point to the fact that a fairly high percentage of people no longer worked. I can't remember what percentage I put on it, but I just thought I don't have the body of knowledge to predict this with specificity. So I'm just going to try to stay away from that. But I will go down a couple of roots. So the personal assistance that people have and, and they could just be conjured physically, kind of like on Star Trek, you know, they beam into the room and they, and they answer whatever questions the person has and, or perform whatever services the person wants them to perform and then they beam away. So that's one thing that seemed science fictiony to me. Probably not plausible, but who knows? Someday maybe.
- [19:07]
Charlie Sykes
Well, and they develop their own personalities and their own attitudes, don't they? Which I thought was kind of an interesting twist that they're not just like automatons, they actually will talk back and seem to be evolving in their own personalities.
- [19:22]
Michael Tomasky
Yeah, yeah. And that's, you know, I mean, you know, AI chatbots learn to do original thinking over time, I guess. And you know, it's very Star Trek y too. You know, I just took some of this from old Star Trek episodes really, you know, but that's the kind of thing you might see and you know, you might see Bones and Spock encounter on some weird planet.
- [19:46]
Charlie Sykes
Well, you also have this very dystopian view of climate change. It's kind of interesting on the morning that you and I are talking, if I step outside my house and I am in the Midwest, of course, we have this pre apocalyptic sky with, you know, the massive wildfires from Canada that have turned, I think Washington D.C. detroit and Chicago have the worst air quality of any cities on the planet planet right now. And in your future vision, there are parts of the world where during certain parts of the day, if you go outside, you will just die. I mean, it Is that bad?
- [20:21]
Michael Tomasky
Yeah. And, you know, the parts of the world are fairly obvious, you know, desert parts. Saudi Arabia, the former Saudi Arabia, and by the time of 21:41, it's the former kingdom of Saudi Arabia, India. You know, all the climbs where, you know, it's really insanely hot right now. So I don't think what I'm saying there is much of an exaggeration. And then it has an impact on certain kinds of species of flora and fauna moving northward. And there's one rather gruesome episode in the book involving a species of beetle, Beatles.
- [21:01]
Charlie Sykes
I was gonna ask you about that one. Where the fate of the United States is actually determined by giant, very hungry, very, very nasty beetles who. I mean, you must have had some fun having Beatles actually devouring a presidential candidate. Gave people a sense of this book. I mean,
- [21:25]
Michael Tomasky
it was fun to write. You know, I don't know. I. I happened across that, quote. I quote, an actual living. Well, he's dead now, but an actual. What's the word for a beetle? Olologist. Coleopter. No, that's a butterfly person. Anyway, this naturalist was once asked by a television interviewer if there were a God, if you believe in a God, what attributes would you ascribe to him? And the person instantly said, a fondness for beetles. Because, like, 30% of the entire animal species on the planet Earth, and this is a fact, this is not something I made up, are beetles. So I did some research about that while I was writing this. And that was another fun thing about writing this, Charlie. I did all kinds of weird little research and went down all kinds of weird little Internet rabbit holes. Anyway, beetles mostly are in sunny, moist areas of the Earth. And so I have them migrating north to New Jersey, and that's where our candidate has his unfortunate encounter.
- [22:37]
Charlie Sykes
Unfortunate? Yeah, unfortunate and rather gruesome encounter. So, as you point out, this book takes place in 2141, 1889, and now. So you started writing this book in 2022. We're having this conversation in 2026. We are seeing what Trump's presiden is like. And one of my thoughts as I was reading the book was, you know, we would like to think that we have the light at the end of the tunnel, that if when Trump, you know, shuffles off this mortal coil, that things will go back to normal. Tell me what you're thinking and how your thinking has changed since you're doing these sort of long historical views about the transformation you're seeing right now. Because one of my takeaways is that things could actually be a lot worse than we're expecting. We're just not going to snap back after he leaves. Well, where are you at right now?
- [23:34]
Michael Tomasky
I'm with you. I think, first of all, assuming, which is obviously not a safe assumption by any stretch of the imagination, but just for the sake of this conversation, assume a Democratic presidential administration in 2029 and even a Democratic House and Democratic Senate. There's so much to do just to restore or improve what was before. 16,000 lawyers have left the Justice Department.
- [24:06]
Charlie Sykes
16,000.
- [24:09]
Michael Tomasky
Is it more than that?
- [24:10]
Charlie Sykes
No, I just, it's such a huge number. I'm just emphasizing it.
- [24:14]
Michael Tomasky
Yes, 16,000 lawyers have left the Justice Department department. How do you rehire 16,000 lawyers in a year? Which really is what, you know, the next administration will need to do. How do you rebuild USAID and restore those functions that save so many lives around the world? And, you know, you can just run down, pardon me, every executive branch, department and agency that have been doged or otherwise rift to the point that they are hardly performing their functions anymore. So all that is before you even get to a positive governing agenda. So I think we're in for a sad new normal for a while. And I don't think see how we're going to. Well,
- [25:12]
Charlie Sykes
yeah, it is hard to know how you fix that. But also it's not just what you do with the federal government. It's what's happened to the culture. You know, whether we have become a post truth culture, which has become a cliche, but also, you know, the Atlantic cover story, that we are sort of in a post literate age, that we don't know how the various technologies are going to change the shift in power to the billionaires. These things have been let loose on society and they're not going away anytime soon, right?
- [25:48]
Michael Tomasky
No, no, no, they're certainly not going away. They're going to intensify. And people are scared. I think people are very scared. This is, is what these data center protests are about, right? I mean, I read that There are nearly 1,000 data center opposition groups across the United States and all across the United States, every state. Now, that means by definition, they can't all be blue operations. You know, they're not put together by Democratic Socialists of America. You know, these are, these are, these are blue, red, purple, everything. And you, we've all seen the stories of places of people in Oklahoma, people in West Virginia rising up against these things. People are, people are really scared about this and people are really scared about the future. And about a hamstrung government's will or ability to do much about it.
- [26:54]
Charlie Sykes
I want to talk to you about the US Deal with Iran and the coverage of that story. Look, obviously everyone, including me, has lots of opinions about this deal. But if you also want to get down to the facts of the story rather than getting lost in the hype of the headlines, there's an app and a website that can help you do that. It's called Ground News, and they have great tools to help you avoid getting caught in a bias bubble and avoid blind spots. For each story, they'll show you how the left, right and the center covered it. The Nobel Peace center even called Ground News an excellent way to stay informed, avoid echo chambers, and expand your worldview. Take for example, this story, a judge denied Joe Biden's bid to block release of transcripts linked to a special counsel inquiry. On the left you'll see headlines like US Judge Rejects Joe Biden's Lawsuit Asking to withhold Memoir Recordings. And on the right you'll see headlines like what is the former President trying to hide? But then you can go to each source and see who's funding them and their factuality rating that shows how subjective or objective the source is. Ground News also has a blind spot feed that shows stories disproportionately covered by either side of the media. So if you want access to stories you may otherwise never see and the necessary context to make up your own mind, visit groundnews.com tc to get 40% off their unlimited access. That's groundnews.com tc so they know that I sent you. I believe that if you like this podcast and what we do here, you'll like their mission. Visit groundnews.com tc today.
- [28:32]
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- [29:35]
Charlie Sykes
Well, and I think that you're also seeing, you know, the people are frightened about what's going to happen with you. You mentioned things that are fixed, you know, in terms of climate change. How many decades can we go without actually addressing some of these things? That's also, you know, let's talk about the breakup of the United States, because this is something that happens almost casually in the book, the Divorce. And I think there's been a lot of loose talk about civil war and things like that. But when a society loses confidence in itself and we no longer have a sense of shared identity, then that becomes a possibility. So what do you actually think? I know we're, we're speculating here, but, you know, as I read the book, you realize that something else that we took for granted, you know, the United States would always be the United States, and yet now there's a question mark over that. What do you think? What are the dangers threatening the unity of the United States over the next. I'm not talking the next four years, next eight years. I'm talking about the next 50, next hundred, 150 years. What do you think?
- [30:39]
Michael Tomasky
Yeah, well, I would say even shorter term than that, Charlie. Maybe the next 30 to 50 years, I could see. I could see a split of some kind. And it might not even be just into two units. The United States might split into four or five or six units, you know, the nation state. So let's go back. The nation state is this artifact of 17th century, 18th century enlightenment thinking. And they became big because bigger was better in terms of fighting wars and defending yourself and so on and so forth. But that's not the only way that the planet has to be organized. Right? And maybe that's a phase, maybe that's not forever. I'm not celebrating it, I'm just saying it. You know, maybe. Maybe that's a phase of human governmental development. Certainly there was a big empire that busted up. The Soviet union split into 15 different things. The Czech Republic split into two. So, you know, it's not inevitable that big countries remain. And, you know, we've had for a long time things that unite us, and we still have those things. But, you know, the things that divide us are coming more to the fore. And I think more of like the anti federalist federalists. If you read the writing of anti federalists, like Clinton of New York, they saw all this, they said, this is the country.
- [32:35]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so let me ask a radical question. And just to raise the issue, would it necessarily be a bad thing if segments of America went in different directions. Maybe, given what you just said, there's historical precedents about it. Maybe we decide that we can have kind of an amicable divorce and share custody of certain things. Because you actually have kind of sketched out what it would look like. And again, not necessarily by state, but in different ways. Would that necessarily be a terrible thing? I mean, I'm assuming the answer is yes, but obviously, going forward, this is a conversation that people are going to have, right?
- [33:19]
Michael Tomasky
I think it is a conversation we're going to have. I mean, there are a lot of secession movements within states. Colorado, Maryland, California. You know, Texas could plausibly be three or four different states. So it wouldn't shock me if, if the energy moved in that direction in the coming decades. All things being equal, I'd rather we remain the United States of America. I think, you know, we've done more good in the world than bad, and I think that.
- [33:51]
Charlie Sykes
And we're used to it.
- [33:52]
Michael Tomasky
Yeah, we're used to it. And, you know, I like the idea of being able to go to, you know, Tennessee without a passport.
- [34:03]
Charlie Sykes
Maybe it would be like the EU or something like that. What would it be like? It would be like. It would. Well, I mean, I find it shocking that we actually are even talking about it, but, you know, it is a reality. So let's talk a little bit about your reaction to Trump's speech last night, because it feels like it ties into all of this. You think about. Actually, I had a thought, and having read your book, I have references back and forth. There was some speculation that Trump was going to say he didn't, that the two Democratic senators from Georgia were fraudulent, they were illegitimate. He didn't say that, but I see that Tommy Tuberville is the dumbest member of the Senate, is saying that there may be like, you know, three or four members of the Senate that are here illegitimately. And my first thought was, this is how democracy dies. Step by step, incrementally grooming the public to believe these things. And once people no longer believe in democracy, then anything could happen. And so clearly, you know, okay, so Donald Trump is obsessed and he's continuing to relitigate 2020, but he's laying the groundwork for radical interventions in 2026 and 2028. I mean, what was your takeaway? It was a low energy speech, but I thought it was. And full of shit, but also very, very dangerous.
- [35:24]
Michael Tomasky
Your take pretty much exactly that. It was a dud of a speech just on its own terms. But the fact that it happened and the things that he said, combined with certain other things that are going on simultaneously make it potentially quite dangerous to the Republic. The simultaneous things going on are the possible confirmations of Todd Blanche and Jay Clayton. So if they assume their offices, we will have an Attorney General who has. Has told us that he'll do whatever Donald Trump wants him to do. So he'll bring new 2020 related indictments and prosecutions, and Jay Clayton will be in charge of our body of intelligence. So he'll dig up dirt on whoever Donald Trump wants him to dig up dirt on. So they will have the power to wage this battle, both a retroactive and proactive battle. Retroactive in the sense that it's built around arguments about 2020, and proactive in the sense that it will inevitably affect 2026 and probably 2028. And they'll have the power to wage this battle without interruption until some group of Republicans in Congress says, no, we're not going to stand for this. But when's that day?
- [36:48]
Charlie Sykes
But this is the moment. But see, this is the moment. This is if. If, you know, there have been some Republicans who have been pretending that they have found their backbone, their courage, their independence. But if not now, then when? Right? I mean, none of this. No Republican can vote to confirm Todd Blanche and then say, later, wow, we were surprised by what happened. Well, I didn't sign up for this. And you would think that at this point, the number of senators who've already eaten the shit sandwiches are voting for RFK Jr and Pete Hegseth and. And Cash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard would go, okay, maybe this is not a good moment to do it. But they have to go into this with their eyes wide open that if you vote for Todd Blanche, you are completely all in on the weaponization, the slush funds, the sweet deals, the insider dealing, the election denialism. I mean, I hesitate to say this is like the ultimate test, because there have been so many other tests, but. But this feels like it's almost a. You can't come back from this one. What do you think?
- [37:53]
Michael Tomasky
I agree. This is a big, big test. And, you know, God forbid, Charlie, that a couple of these people think, you know, I understand, you know, how great it must be to be in the United States Senate and to have people call you senator and sir and ma' am all day and hold doors for you and genuflect to you and treat you like you're a royal person, and to have all those and to live like that. But there has to be a point at which your honor comes into play. And you think, you know what, I can have a perfectly good life back in wherever practicing law. So I won't be a United States senator, but I'll be able to look at myself in the mirror and I'll have a perfectly happy, much less stressful life. Why can't anybody say that to themselves these days?
- [38:52]
Charlie Sykes
Well, I've been asking that for the last 10 years, which feels like the perfect segue to Lindsey Graham. Why don't you get your thoughts on this? Because Lindsey Graham, I remember him in 2016. He was smart, he was funny, he was independent, he was John McCain's wingman. I think he could have. He was a good man. He could have actually been a kind of a great man in some ways. Instead, he chose to be Trump's man. So what is your take? And again, I know that it's awkward to speak ill of the recently dead, but you think of, you know, your question of, like, at what point do you just have a little bit of pride? And what Lindsey Graham was willing to do in order to stay relevant, to stay close to power, was extraordinary. And I would think that other senators would say, do I want to be remembered like him? How do we remember? What do you make of Lindsey Graham?
- [39:48]
Michael Tomasky
Just what you said, that he just decided that he, that he needed to be close to power. And it was just too intoxicating for him to do otherwise. Because not only did he go from being a quite admirable Trump critic in 2016, even to the point where he didn't vote for him, he wrote in third party candidate Evan McMullen. Not only did he go from that, he didn't simply go from that to being a guy who made his grudging peace with Trump, he went from that to Trump's literally biggest senatorial cheerleader. Biggest. For a few rounds of golf. For what?
- [40:31]
Charlie Sykes
You know, you sold your soul for a few rounds of golf. What profits a man if he sells, if he loses his soul, if he gains the whole world, but for a few rounds of golf with Donald Trump, that's pretty good.
- [40:44]
Michael Tomasky
Well, we don't. You and I don't haven't played those fairways down at Trump Doral.
- [40:51]
Thomson Reuters Announcer
No.
- [40:51]
Michael Tomasky
So.
- [40:52]
Charlie Sykes
No. And he's never invited me down. You know, I was thinking, though, that. So as you, as I was reading your novel, you know, I was thinking if I was writing a dystopian novel of the future, you know, what would be happening. And the problem is, it is Hard to keep up with actual reality here. And, you know, I interviewed on this, on this podcast, the executive producer of andor the Star wars thing, and where he actually, for a while he was saying, no, this is not about Trump. This is not about what's happening to America. And then finally he said, absolutely, of course it is. And yet, just like you, he was sort of surprised at the way that actual reality was catching up to the fiction. And I was thinking, imagine somebody writing a few years ago this dystopian fiction of mask, you know, thousands of mass government agents without badges, you know, and, you know, unmarked cars going around and beating up and murdering people in the streets. You would think, okay, that can't happen in America. And yet literally every day that's what you're seeing with ice. And just this last week, we saw another killing in Maine. Turns out this ice age and has a long history of violence. And there was like a moment of maybe like sanity or decency, maybe that's going too far. And they said, maybe we'll stop the traffic stops. And Donald Trump immediately countermanded the order and said, let's keep doing what we are doing. And it is that cultivation and celebration, that fetish for brutality, which feels like it's changing our culture. It's coarsening the kind of people that we are.
- [42:31]
Michael Tomasky
It is and, you know, made all the more tragic by the fact that they trump Stephen Miller, the people who espouse that worldview claim that that is Americanism.
- [42:47]
Charlie Sykes
Yes.
- [42:48]
Michael Tomasky
That that's what America is. And, you know, to you and me and our listeners and many, many, many millions of people, that is not America. And that's something that we should never forget as we, I assume, toward the conclusion here. But, you know, there are, you know, it's not just you and me and, you know, Nicole Wallace and, you know, other hosts on that show on that network, it's many millions of people who are offended by this.
- [43:29]
Charlie Sykes
So are you hopeful? Look, looking ahead, having sketched out this horrific dystopian 2141, are you, Michael Tomaski, right now, hopeful for the future, or how would you describe yourself?
- [43:44]
Michael Tomasky
I'd like to be more hopeful than I am. We need a Democratic Party that. Because that's the only alternative. We need a Democratic Party that stands on principle. And I don't even mean like left versus moderate here, but a Democratic Party that understands that its job is to represent the millions of people, left wing, liberal, moderate, what have you, who love this country and who believe that what Trump and Maga are doing is a complete perversion of this country's value and they have to argue on those terms. You know, their pollsters tell them just talk about gas prices. No, no. I mean, yes, talk about gas prices, but talk about who we are and what this republic is supposed to be. I honestly believe even if people say in focus groups they don't care about that, if you say it the right way, they'll care. Make them care. Make them care.
- [44:55]
Charlie Sykes
Well, the book is Killing Baby Hitler by Michael Tomoski. It is a hell of a read. It is fun. It is disturbing. I went back and forth between being horrified, disturbed and amused by it. Our friend Molly Jong Fast says, savagely funny, unexpected, creative, inventive. Really explains the dark times we live in. And that is the key. I strongly recommend it. I really have enjoyed our conversation. Michael, thank you so much for writing the book and for taking the time to talk with me about it.
- [45:26]
Michael Tomasky
I'm really grateful for your interest. Charlie thanks.
- [45:29]
Charlie Sykes
And thank you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. You know why we do this and why people like Michael Tomaski write books like this. Because we need to keep reminding ourselves that we are not the crazy ones. Thank you. When everything is moving all at once. Your workforce, your tech stack, your business. You don't need more tools. You need one solution. That's why Paylocity built a single platform to connect hr, finance and IT with AI driven insights and automated workflows that simplify the complex and power. What's next? Because when everything comes together in one place, growth comes easy. Experience. One place for all your HCM needs. Start now at paylocity.com 1 is your
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- [47:03]
Thomson Reuters Announcer
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