Welcome to Off Message. I'm Isaac Devere. Today's guest, Utah Senator Mike Lee. Lee is one of the

Senate's most conservative members and one of the ones who hasn't wavered much in his approach to

issues since last year's elections, which came with Donald Trump, winning the presidency, of course,

but also the Republican Party being in full control of the House and the Senate.

There is one thing that he's wavered on, Donald Trump himself.

Lee very notably kept his distance from Trump last year.

Here's a headline from the New York Times from June.

Senator Mike Lee unloads on why he can't embrace Donald Trump.

Well, like a lot of his colleagues, he's been trying to work with Trump since the election.

That's included on the health care bill, and you'll hear why he thinks it's absolutely gone the wrong way.

But the relationship with Trump is a complicated one.

These days, Lee says, though not super eagerly, as you'll hear, that Trump is the head of the Republican Party, and he has to work with him.

History is important to Lee.

He's written a few books delving into it, the most recent being one called written out of history,

the forgotten founders who fought big government that came out at the end of May.

Okay, if you've listened to a few of these podcasts, you might remember that I got a master's degree in history before turning around and getting into journalism. And I've read a lot of these kind of pop history books. Lee's argument is that liberals have attached their own politics

to the founding fathers. And that's not right because they're cherry-picking statements that they like.

He does some cherry-picking of his own and finds a defense of limited government that's at our country's

core. Lee's target is more the Lin-Manuel Miranda version of history. Miranda wrote

about Hamilton. Lee's first chapter is about Aaron Burr. And though he says he loves the soundtrack to the

musical, he hates the way it's been turned into a political rallying point. Wow. We got into all this.

Also, his take on what the founding fathers would think of the healthcare process right now.

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