(This conversation originally aired on July 28, 2022)
Welcome to this encore edition of Midday. Tom's guest is the award-winning author and journalist Mark Leibovich. He was the Chief National Correspondent for the New York Times for 10 years, before moving to The Atlantic this past spring.
Leibovich is the author of four books, including the number one NY Times best seller, This Town, in which he chronicles the incestuous relationship between Washington media and the political class.
His latest book was number one on the best seller list just two weeks after it was published in July. It examines the unprecedented and often inexplicable spell cast on the Republican party by Donald Trump, whose demands for fealty and obsequiousness know no bounds. As Leibovich deftly observes, official Washington not only curried favor with Mr. Trump, it groveled with a degree of servility unmatched in American political history.
Leibovich offers an insightful glimpse into a world where Trump’s supporters remain enthralled, despite the revelations of the January 6th Committee, or the ignominy that Trump continues to heap upon himself as he repeats, over and over, a medley of malicious lies about the election he lost.
The book is called Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission.
Mark Leibovich joined us in July on Zoom from Washington, DC…
