Hi, and welcome to the Origins Podcast. I'm your host Lawrence Krause. Today's podcast is different

than all of our other podcasts because it was recorded remotely due to the pandemic. I was in our

studio in Phoenix and my guest, David Frum, was across the country

in Washington. And now here I am at home recording this introduction after the fact. Nevertheless,

despite all those difficulties, the discussion itself was fascinating and particularly timely.

Frum has written a book recently, Trumpocalypse, describing his impression not just of the last three years of the Trump administration,

but more importantly, his reflections on its relationship to democracy and his concern about the future of democracy in this country,

and how to get beyond the current administration.

Now, what makes this particularly interesting is that from himself is a conservative commentator

with well-known credentials.

He was a speechwriter after all for George W. Bush.

And we talked very widely, not just about the history of conservatism and democracy in this country,

but also about various aspects of the Bush administration

and the 20 years between then and now.

The discussion was extremely wide-ranging and incredibly interesting

because of his experience and knowledge,

both as someone trained, as historian and lawyer, who later became a journalist, and also because of his background.

We share a commonality that we talked about at the beginning.

We both grew up in Toronto and moved to the United States as young adults with vastly different politics.

But our experiences there versus here color, I think,

both of our views of political systems and the world, differing as they do. But the fact

that we've come together at the current time and agree on so many things where earlier we

...