This is Fresh Air.

I'm Dave Davies and for Terry Gross.

Our guest Robert Draper is a veteran political reporter who's written about American conservatism

for more than two decades.

He writes in a new book that the 18-month period after the Donald Trump presidency ended.

The Republican Party plunged deeper into the Trumpian cult of compulsive dissembling

and conspiracy mongering.

Politicians once regarded as fringe figures like George O'Connor's woman Marjorie Taylor

Green, he says, are now among the party's most influential leaders.

And he says extreme positions that have taken hold go beyond denying the results of the

2020 election.

Republicans are now more likely to call Democrats not just wrong but evil or communists.

Draper's book is titled Weapons of Mass Delusion when the Republican Party lost its mind.

In the book, he describes explaining the title to Marjorie Taylor Green, telling her that

it's delusional to claim that a vast conspiracy, yet to be revealed with any credible evidence,

had stolen the 2020 presidential election and that those who hold to that delusion have

lost their minds.

In a bit we'll ask him what Taylor Green had to say in response, man, we'll hear more

about his reporting on developments in the Republican Party.

Robert Draper is a contributing writer for the New York Times magazine and National Geographic

magazine.

Among his previous books are To Start a War, How the Bush Administration Took America Into

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