Brendan Buck on the Lessons of the Trump Disaster & the Urgent Need for GOP Pols to Tell the Truth to their Voters

<p>Brendan Buck worked for two Republican Speakers of the House: John Boehner and Paul Ryan. He's now a partner at the strategic comms shop Seven Letter. I first met him when I was writing about the rise of the Tea Party a decade ago, which feels like much longer than that. We talk about some of the ways that American politics is structured to make it hard for politicians to do what they know is right, including telling the truth to their own supporters. Brendan thinks that is one of the main reasons we are in this mess, bc the GOP in particular has lied to its own voters for many years, telling them that the government is all bad and that the Republican party is not fighting hard enough for them.</p><p><br></p><p>This is the first episode of 2021. Almost exactly a month ago, in mid-December, on the last episode, John Dickerson of CBS News said that the failure of Republican leaders like Mitch McConnell to rebuke President Trump's lies about the 2020 election had done "real damage" to American democracy.</p><p><br></p><p>At the time, one of McConnell's top advisers, Josh Holmes, mocked Dickerson.</p><p><br></p><p>"It’s genuinely astonishing how little the media knows about American politics today and the American electorate. They still operate as though they’re Walter Cronkite telling you “that’s the way it is” when in reality over half of America believes, with cause, nothing they say," <a href="https://twitter.com/HolmesJosh/status/1339034657216671745" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Holmes tweeted</a>.</p><p><br></p><p>In another tweet, <a href="https://twitter.com/HolmesJosh/status/1339038087326916608" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Holmes said</a> that "media isn't relevant."</p><p><br></p><p>Steven Law, another close McConnell adviser,<a href="https://twitter.com/LawAmericanX/status/1339070837001957379" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> tweeted</a> in response that Holmes' rebuke was "the wake-up call the American media needs but will never hear as they get left further and fur