Amanda Carpenter

And I've always firmly come down on the side of not because he had so many opportunities to stop it before the last minute.

It was my working thesis that people like Mike Pence and Bill Barr really didn't bolt from Trump until the responsibility landed right on their plate.

Mike Pence issued that statement at the last minute before members of Congress were taking their seats on January 6th.

If he had done that a week before, a day before, there's a chance that the mob may not have materialized because they wouldn't have thought the plan to pressure Mike Pence would have worked.

And so I just, I really struggle with that.

And I really think this is the key to explaining why people break.

They go along with it while it's good for them until they realize the consequences could blow back on them.

And I've thought so deeply about this.

I wasn't planning to talk about this, but I've actually, you know, I've written and I'm shopping around, we're trying to shop around a whole dark satire novel about complicity.

And the person that's a prototype in my head is like,

Maybe he looks like Mike Johnson, but these heritage types who go along with all of these things because of opportunism, because they think they are still protecting their family.

There's all kinds of reasons why.

I'm really glad you did your book because I think we have to understand why people go along with this in America specifically.

And I think the absurdity of Trump provides a lot of plausible deniability, which makes the story I write funny, I think, to me, but also really dark.

But, yeah, this is a subject I am endlessly fascinated by.

And one thing in your book.

When it comes to how people cope, and maybe this is funny, but I can't not think about it.

I think about it probably every other couple of days.

Yeah, I do.

You talk to Caroline Wren, who was like a donor, like she was adjacent to the donor and Bannon people.