Welcome to the Bullowork Podcast. I'm Charlie Sites. It's April 11, 2013. I was doing a

serious XM interview yesterday and we came on right after a news broadcast about the

latest mass shooting in Louisville and they were describing it as the 145th mass shooting

of the year so far. My initial reaction was, they can't be right, they can't be 145 so

far. I mean, it's only the middle of April and sure enough, it is. So I wrote my newsletter

this morning. I broke a long-standing rule that I have that I don't. I tried not to engage

in the doom loop of debate about gun violence mainly because it gets me so worked up.

You know what I wrote was, it is staggering that we are not staggered by this, the volume

of it, the frequency. We're really at the point now where our coverage of the latest tragedy

mass shooting school shooting is interrupted by breaking news about the next mass shooting,

the next tragedy. And yet we move on and it is so frustrating. So there's so much to talk

about today. And so we are very fortunate to be joined by Peter Wainner, contributing

writer at the Atlantic in the New York Times whose books include The Death of Politics,

how to heal our frayed republic after Trump. And Peter is a senior fellow with the Trinity

Forum served in the Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43 administrations. Peter is so good

to have you back on the podcast. Thanks, Charlie. It's always a pleasure to be with you on

the great admirer of your work. So thanks for having me on.

So I want to talk about your latest piece about Donald Trump, a grotesque man presiding

over a grotesque party. But since I broke my own personal rule about not talking about

shootings, I thought I would get your take on all of this. It has become so numbing to

see this process of people who are shocked, they're horrified for a few days. But we

always seem to have the sense that we're not going to engage in it. And I guess I try

...