Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Friday. Delighted to welcome back, our former friend. She's now a writer and editor at Project Democracy.org, which is pretty important. And this week, she was a guest host on The View. It's all caps Amanda Carpenter. What's up, Amanda? Wait, hold on. Former friend? Well, did I saw, is that what I said? You said former friend. Just, it's Friday morning. Like, a emotion. Like, you guys have best friends.

You have all kinds of things. And I'm former friend. Current friend. All right. Former colleague. Close ally. You know, partner in crime. Whatever you want to say. You're on the view this week. Can I indulge you for a second in the audience with something that you're, you're replacing Alyssa Farah? I in let's let's be clear i was a guest for three days um but yeah it's your show dude

you're filling in for lissa farra uh had a new baby jeston congrats to her and um alissa you know

look elissa worked for my pants eliza was in there and Trump 1.0.

So fair skepticism about Alyssa sometimes from people.

And let me tell you, that fair skepticism extended to me.

When I was writing why we did it, I was trying to analyze the psychology of people who knew better but went along with Trump anyway. So it's kind of

hard to pick representative people because I didn't want to do a Mean Girls Burn book, you know,

where I was just like slaying random people and like just choosing based on like past slights

from campaigns of your. And so what I decided to do was choose the group that did the autopsy with me.

Because me and one other woman were basically the only people that didn't go along with Trump,

the core autopsy group. But the problem was like none of those people like really fit one archetype.

And so I needed somebody else to offer to participate. And I called around to different people.

And I didn't know this at all. I never met her. And we met in secret. It was very furtive. You know, she was nervous at the time. You don't want to be seen with me. With you? She didn't want to be seen with you? She didn't want to be seen with me. Well, right, because, you know, she's still in a transition period, right?

Like, this was, like, right after she had quit.

Okay.

It was like right.

It was right after she. She didn't want to be seen with me. Well, right, because, you know, she's still in a transition period, right?

Like, this was, like, right after she had quit.

Okay.

It was like, right. It was right after January 6. But, like, you know, she was like, do I still want to work in Republican politics? Do I just want to burn it down? Do I want to go be a shepherd? You know, like, she didn't know. She's going through it.

And so, you know, we're keeping optionality, meeting in a random hotel in secret.

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