New book ‘Weapons of Mass Delusion’ details Republicans’ embrace of conspiracy theories

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• Judy Woodruff:

  Heading into the final days of the midterms, large parts of the Republican base remain fervent believers in former President Donald Trump's lies that he won the last election.

  Lisa Desjardins sits down with the author of a new book looking into what he calls the politics of hysteria.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Several recent books try to make sense of 2020, January 6, and former President Donald Trump's reach, but one book, "Weapons of Mass Delusion," hones in on other Republicans, including some rising stars.

  And its author, Robert Draper, joins me now.

  We're going to talk more about your book. But, obviously, there has been some news that overlaps with the themes in your book. And I wonder, when you look at the right and you look at the reporting, what we know about the attack on Paul Pelosi, what do you think of it?

  Robert Draper, Author, "Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind": Well, I think it falls into the category of terribly shocking and not terribly surprising.

  We have seen what began as the coarsening of political rhetoric become a demonization of the other side. I'm not putting this on anybody in particular, but I do you think violence against the speaker's husband is something that has been foreshadowed.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Your book gets at something that I have been wrestling with daily since January 6, which is groupthink., in politics, sometimes, we have seen that become even mob mentality.

  And I want to ask you to read a passage that sparked some thought, for me especially, near the end of your epilogue.

• Robert Draper:

  Sure.

  I conclude this way: "Amid the tangled threads of American life, only one strand straight and true stood out, evil. It was omnipresent, stable, and oddly stabilizing, a kind of dark lodestar to measure one's worth against. So long as there was evil, there was righteousness. Identify evil, and the details did not matter. Facts did not matter."

• Lisa Desjardins:

  I noticed, when I was tweeting my reporting about the attack on Paul Pelosi, that I saw an unprecedented, from my experience, number of responses to my reporting that were just vile, blaming Paul Pelosi, conspiracies and beyond.

  Some Republican lawmakers have repeated those ideas in the past few days.

• Robert Draper:

  They're preposterous, but they have an antecedent, the way that Speaker Pelosi has been targeted over the years, and has been not just the butt of jokes, not just being called liberal or immoral or something like that, but really has been objectified as almost this sort of demon force of the left.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Given that, what I want to ask you is, what did you learn about why so many Americans who are smart come to believe in things like election denial that are so glaringly false?

• Robert Draper:

  Sure.

  Well, they dwell in an ecosystem, Lisa, where that's all they hear, that's all they know. Their influencers in the media tell them this. Their officeholders tell them this. Their neighbors tell them this. And all of their information sources tell them this.

  So — there's lacking any alternative voice or any reason to seek out an alternative voice, then they come to believe that up is down and black is white.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  And they come to believe that they're the heroes.

• Robert Draper:

  They certainly believe that the stakes are existential. And they believe that the other side is evil, and, therefore, contrasted to the other side, they are patriotic.

  And that kind of notion justifies, among other things, the insurrection that took place on January 6.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  You do sketch out some characters who are often portrayed kind of in cartoonish ways, but above all of them in your book looms Marjorie Taylor Greene.

  What drives her? And do you think she's the future of the Republican Party?

• Robert Draper:

  It's been tempting to say, Lisa, that what drives her is a lust for attention. And a lot of journalists have focused on that, because part of that is true.

  But I think one also should probably take her at her word that she decided to run for Congress in 2019 because Republicans, in her view, weren't doing enough. And, for that matter, when she went to go visit with Republicans or tried to on Capitol Hill in early 2019, she couldn't get any of them to talk to her.

  So I think it's a sense of kind of vendetta against her own party that she carries to this day that was one reason why she ran. The tendency is to focus on someone like Greene and, for that matter, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz and others, and view them as just the performative wing of the Republican Party. And the corollary then is, ignore the performers and they will go away.

  But I…

• Lisa Desjardins:

  The sideshow.

• Robert Draper:

  That's right, that all you're doing is giving them oxygen by paying attention to them.

  But that's belied by the fact that Greene has, in fact, grown in influence in her own party, that she is a top fund-raiser, that leadership is clearly scared out of their minds that — and is now offering her plum committee assignments, and that she is very likely to control the agenda.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  And you have been able to talk to her.

  And among your takeaways too was sort of how she has complete disregard for Kevin McCarthy, the leader of House Republicans, who is in position to become speaker, should they gain the majority, which they could do next year, or — and they could do it with the election next week.

  What do you think that kind of Republican majority would look like, given your reporting in the book?

• Robert Draper:

  The first thing that is likely to happen, as Greene said to me, is, there's going to be a lot of investigations. And Greene intends to be at the center of that.

  She thinks that she's going to get on the Judiciary Committee. The guy who's likely to be the chair of Oversight, James Comer, has already said that he would welcome her to that committee as well. So we can expect investigations relating to the pandemic, relating to Hunter Biden's laptop, et cetera.

  We can also expect there to be impeachment inquiries. And Greene, after all, has been submitting resolutions for impeachment since literally Biden's first full day in office as president. What happens after that remains to be seen. It could be social wedge issues, immigration or whatever that's tied to the debt ceiling, but, almost certainly, that's going to be in a hostage situation.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Do you think Kevin McCarthy could control Marjorie Taylor Greene and her allies, or will they control him?

• Robert Draper:

  The latter.

  I know that people have said that, if McCarthy manages to get a majority of, say, 20, or 25, or something like, that he can disregard Greene,. Greene has said to me — and I believe her on this — that's not how it works. The fact is, is that they're paying attention to me at all, they're humoring me or whatever because I represent the MAGA base.

  And the base of the party is indeed still controlled by Donald Trump, with Greene being a proxy of that.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  The title of your book is "Weapons of Mass Delusion."

  How deep does that delusion go? How dangerous is it for the country right now?

• Robert Draper:

  It's deep and it's dangerous. And I'm glad you ask that, because that's the real focus of the book, the delusion en masse of tens of millions of Americans who continue to believe not only that the 2020 election was stolen, believe that Democrats cheat to win, but also believe all of these sort of corollary lies, for example, that January the 6th was — take your pick — either the work of Antifa, or a peaceful protest, or…

• Lisa Desjardins:

  FBI.

• Robert Draper:

  … maybe staged by the FBI, believes that COVID vaccines are — take your pick — ineffectual killers, et cetera.

  And…

• Lisa Desjardins:

  All untrue, yes, all untrue.

• Robert Draper:

  Yes. That's right. That's right, yes.

  And so this — so, when you have a party whose base, tens of millions of individuals, believe things that are provably false, then you do have to ask the question, when will truth be restored? And in the absence of truth being restored, what does one make of a party whose platform basically is the stuff of lies? And what does that do to our democracy?

  I think it's, yes, a very scary situation for our country.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Robert Draper, thank you for all of your reporting.

  The book is "Weapons of Mass Delusion." Thank you.

• Robert Draper:

  My pleasure.