Donald Trump Didn't Hijack the G.O.P. He Understood It.
About this episode
Klein speaks with conservative historian Matthew Continetti about his book The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism. Continetti traces the century-long tension between the conservative movement's intellectual elites and its populist base, arguing that Trump's rise was less a hostile takeover than the eruption of a populist current always present on the American right — from McCarthyism and the John Birch Society through George Wallace, Pat Buchanan, and the Tea Party. They discuss how William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and Newt Gingrich each negotiated with that energy, how race, immigration, and anti-elitism became defining fault lines, and what Trump's transformation of the GOP portends for the future of American conservatism.