John Ganz

The people I write about exited the Reagan years feeling betrayed and let down that he wasn't more radical rightist.

For people on the left like me, you know, that sounds wild because we think, oh, Reagan was an absolute catastrophe and could not have been more right wing.

And as Buchanan said, the biggest vacuum in American politics is to the right of Ronald Reagan.

And there was a constituency for the type of politics they practiced.

It became apparent.

Wallace campaign showed it was there.

It overlaps with, let's say, the Republican primary voter.

But it's not entirely partisan because it's an – I think this is what you have to understand about Trump is and what I was trying to get out of my book.

He also encapsulates the spirit of –

of a third party candidate, right, of a candidate like Ross Perot, who comes out and says, you know, the parties are crooked.

I'm going to reform them.

I'm going to change everything.

So there is a populist spirit which is not entirely contained in either party and, in fact, can attack the party's system itself.

And if you look at the way Trump takes over the Republican Party, he kind of attacks it as a as a almost a third party kind of candidate.

He is not connected with any of the existing power structures.

He's connected with kind of a mass movement in the Republican Party because he has he's a Tea Party figure, but he's not connected really so far and the elites that that.

that that generates, but he's not connected to any of the old party structures.

And that makes him appeal, right?

Because there's a feeling of betrayal, a feeling that those people aren't tough enough.

I mean, the Massey quote where he said, oh, I realized that they didn't care what I believed.