This is fresh air, I'm Terry Gross. In his new book, The Destructionist, the 25-year

crack-up of the Republican Party, my guest Dana Milbank writes about how we got to where we are today.

Some members of Congress and some of this year's Republican primary winners are election

deniers that subscribe to conspiracy theories. One of Trump's major lies, backed by conspiracy theories,

is that the 2020 election was stolen. His attempts to declare himself the winner led to the

insurrection. In May of 2021, a poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 23%

of Republicans agree that, quote, the government, media, and financial worlds in the US are controlled

by a group of Satan worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation.

Milbank's book looks back over the past 25 years, tracing the roots of today's political

lies and conspiracy theories. He begins in 1994 with the Newt Gingrich, then a Republican

congressman from Georgia, leading his party to a landslide victory in the midterms, with Republicans

taking over the House and the Senate. It was known as the Republican Revolution. During the early

months of that revolution, Milbank came to Washington, D.C., to cover Congress for the Wall Street

Journal, and then he covered Bill Clinton's presidency and his impeachment for the New Republic.

That led to becoming the White House correspondent for the Washington Post and covering George W. Bush's

presidency. Milbank has been a political columnist at the post for the past 17 years. His years

covering Washington provided what he describes as a front row seat for the worst show on Earth,

the crack up of the Republican Party and the resulting crack up of American democracy.

Dana Milbank, welcome back to Fresh Air. I want to get your reaction to some of the comments that

have been made as of this morning from Republicans about the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago.

House minority leader Kevin McCarthy said that the Justice Department has, quote,

reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization. He said, Attorney General Garland

...