Tim Miller is thriving as an apostate. A onetime Republican campaign veteran — he served as Jeb Bush’s communications director in 2016 — Miller long ago severed his ties with the GOP over his deep disdain for Donald Trump and the party’s direction. He then documented his disillusionment in 2022’s psychologically astute Why We Did It: A Travelogue From the Republican Road to Hell. These days, Miller is best known as the front man of the flourishing never-Trump haven The Bulwark, where he hosts colleagues and elected officials on its daily podcast, and has become an increasingly familiar face online thanks to the site’s booming video presence. I sat down with Miller recently about why Republican lawmakers allow Trump to humiliate themselves so badly, the Graham Platner mess, and JD Vance’s lack of huggability.

I’ve been reading your book. It feels a little dated to me now that Trump won again. The main question that I was trying to get at, which is why did people who know better go along with Trump — I feel proud of that and I think there’s a lot of interesting and relevant insights that explain it. I felt like I was suited to explain it, because it was my world. Most of the people I interviewed for the book were friends, were some level personal friends or colleagues, with a couple of exceptions like Alyssa Farah, who I didn’t know. So I felt like they were being honest with me and I got a pretty good look about why people went along with it. It feels dated because that character doesn’t really exist that much in our world right now.

Right, is there anyone who even fits that description? Anyone still wrestling with their conscience?Not really. People have accepted and embraced it, and that’s a different psychological question than the one I was trying to get at. It’s almost like an extinct species I was writing about from the first term. So at that level, it makes me a little bit sad when people bring me the book now to sign it. I’m just like, I can’t believe we’re still doing this.

I’m curious about the way the GOP allows itself to be humiliated by Trump. Politically, I certainly get why you wouldn’t want to cross him — he can end your career. But what somewhat confuses me is when somebody like Bill Cassidy votes for RFK Jr. against his beliefs, gets primaried, and loses badly — but then even after he loses, he still can’t bring himself to criticize Trump by name. John Cornyn loses badly too, and posted a fable about the scorpion and the frog — vague, elliptical stuff, again without mentioning the president. It’s like there’s some weird psychological dynamic I’m not quite grasping. Or is it as simple as they just don’t want to be attacked by one of Trump’s fans?Maybe some of them are into the BDSM of it, but I think mostly it is A) a survival mechanism, and B) the cultural waters they’re swimming in and their social circles. This is another thing I learned from the book. I was reconnecting with a lot of old friends that I hadn’t talked to in a while because I went so hard on Trump and we had such a strong professional break. And when you hear them talk — in their social circles, in their bubble, rationalizing Trump is required. It’s what people do.

There was a period of time where people were like, “Oh, they’re really saying different stuff in the green room than they do on TV.” But what is happening now is I think all the business execs John Cornyn hangs out with at the country club and the Republican dinners — they’re all giving him a permission structure to rationalize it. They want him to. A lot of these guys actually don’t have people in their lives being like, “This is humiliating. Aren’t you embarrassed?” I think you’d be surprised how few people have said that to Cassidy and Cornyn.

Speaking of sucking up, there was a New York Times article a few days ago about Trump and J.D. Vance, in which it’s clear that Trump is somewhat doubtful about Vance’s prospects. What’s your take on the vice president?He’s deeply uncomfortable in his own skin. It’s hard to imagine hugging J.D.; it feels like it’d be a very uncomfortable touch. The Trump phenomenon with him —  and Trump does this with a lot of people — is he wants everyone to suck up to him and to be a toady, but eventually he grows to not respect it. Michael Cohen is the arch example of this, where the loyalty is not a two-way street

They become too obsequious. Yeah, it’s a fine line. Eventually you fall over the other side. And I wonder if that’s happened to J.D.

I do kind of feel like because J.D. is so unappealing, people in liberal circles underestimate his skillset a little bit. The starkest example of this to me was that first TPUSA conference after Charlie Kirk got killed. And the big news from it was like—  oh my God, the girlies are fighting. Ben Shapiro was on stage attacking Tucker. Tucker was attacking Shapiro. But the interesting thing is that everybody in that fight was basically projecting J.D. Vance as a leader that represented their side of the argument. Can he continue that forever? I don’t know. But he’s navigated it pretty deftly. The hardest-core Neocon types aren’t going to be for J.D., but they’re such a minor player in the party. But he can get the conspiracy NatCon Tucker wing and the Daily Wire crowd and the Fox people…he signals to all sides. He is on their side at various times. Eventually, that might not work. And who the hell knows, we’re a long way away. His Trump management is key, which is why that Times article was so interesting.

The other question Republicans will have to answer in 2020 and beyond is how do you keep the non-engaged MAGA voter excited about politics? Trump brought a lot of new people into the program, and then in 2024, he added a lot of folks who are not really big political professionals. It was a smart strategy. He was doing the MMA stuff, he was on with streamers. People really obsessed over the manosphere stuff, but it went beyond that.

He’s betrayed a lot of what he promised to those people, but also, could J.D. Vance get them to keep caring about politics? Won’t a lot of those people just go back to their lives when they weren’t watching the news and their identity was tied up in other stuff, whether that be MMA fighting or whatever? It’s risky to have your coalition be tied to people that don’t really vote and aren’t really engaged. Trump can turn them, because he’s got that skill. Can J.D. do it? I find that kind of hard to believe.

There was a confluence of issues at the time that helped turn them, too: inflation, Biden’s age, wokeness. I  don’t know if that’s going to be such an opportunity next time.This is another area where I’m counter to the conventional wisdom, but I don’t think wokeness is over, and I am pretty concerned about it in 2028. The culture that created the pernicious parts of wokeness and the parts that there was backlash against still exists — this kind of online purity test world where people berate anybody that has wrong opinions.

I do think there were obviously good parts about more representation and all that,........

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