Will Sommer: Across the MAGA-Verse
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Who is Will Sommer and what is his background?
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Today's guest is the newest senior reporter here at the Bulwark. He joined us from the Washington Post where he covered the media and conspiracy theories and other such matters. He's the author of Trust the Plan, The Rise of QAnon, and The Conspiracy that Unhinged America. And he's the former host of one of my favorite pods. It was called Fever Dreams at the Daily Beast. it's Will Sommer. And right now, he's living that fever dream. And your fever dreams are our reality, I guess, is what I meant. Yes, we're all in the fever dream now, right? I want to start by, before we get to the news, by doing your backstory. I mean, I guess we all imagined that Trump could possibly win again, right?
It was not like we were totally blindsided by that possibility, particularly here at the Bulwark. But I mean, did you ever imagine when you were covering the fever swamps of QAnon, you know, back four or five years ago, doing this podcast that, like, these people would be literally running the country? No. It's true now, even in a way that it wasn't in 2018.
Yeah, I mean, it's difficult to imagine. I feel like sort of every step on the road, and I'm sure a lot of people feel like this, is that every step is like, wow, I never would have thought it would have come to this. The idea that we're at the point where Dan Bongino getting appointed to the FBI or Kash Patel even to head the FBI, I think it's like, oh, Kash Patel, the recurring Steve Bannon guest? And it's like, oh, of course, now that that's such a common thing. I mean, it's a lot to grapple with, and I think it sort of alarmingly raises questions about what's going to happen in two or three years from now. But at the same time, I think that's why there's such value in kind of keeping up with these characters.
And I say this to people, you know, who are not of this world, which include, you know, kind of my normie former Republican friends, as well as like liberals and progressives. I'm like, I know these people. And it gives me a different perspective on what we have to come. I guess I won't jaundice you by telling you what I think. The fact that you have just entrenched yourselves in these fever swamps, does that make you more alarmed, more concerned, more feeling like it's going to just be a clown show? How does your perspective inform what you think is ahead here?
Yeah, I mean, well, you know, I grew up as like a young teen Republican in Texas. I mean, I was like obsessed with like Bill O'Reilly and Ayn Rand and all this stuff. And I, you know, I would stay up late listening to talk radio. And it really sticks out to me. I was like in eighth grade listening to Michael Savage. And he was like, we just got to nuke China, just nuke those dams and flood the whole country. And I thought, man, if this is what like one of the main voices in the party wants here, you know, in the right wing media. I feel like there's this disconnect between the voters and what the politicians are doing, which is, you know, like cutting Social Security, trying to balance the budget, stuff like that. And ultimately, we saw that that contradiction resolved by Trump, who, you know, is giving the voters all these kind of atomistic or giving into their urges.
And so, yeah, I mean, I think it is ominous for me to be keeping up with this stuff so closely and then think, well, geez, you know, it seems like Trump is really willing to do a lot of things for the base. And so what is he going to do next?
Yeah. Well, the shorthand of that is what you're telling me is that what the realization I came to about the dangers of my party in my 30s was something you realized in eighth grade. Was that the short summary of that story?
It went on for a few more years. And then I was working for this state senate primary campaign in Texas. And Dan Patrick, who is now the lieutenant governor, he won and he beat my candidate. And I thought, well, that guy's like a total lunatic. If this is what you want in a landslide.
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