Welcome to the Bulworth podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. I was thinking of doing something a little bit different today, stepping back from the latest shambolic stories about what's happening in Congress. I thought this would be a good moment to

pull the lens back just a little bit and ask how we got here and what

is happening and who better to do that than our guest today, Peter Wiener, contributing

writer at The Atlantic and the New York Times, the author of a number of books

including the death of politics. He's a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum and

served in the Reagan Bush 41 and Bush 43 administrations which we refer to as the before times around here.

Welcome back on the podcast, Peter.

Great to be with you Charlie.

Thanks for all you are doing and your colleagues are doing.

Well, you had a brilliant piece in the Atlantic that put everything into context including what's happening now in Congress.

A lot of coverage right now about whether or not the new speaker Mike Johnson, whose name I'm still getting used to, Mike Johnson,

this part of me that always thinks I'm getting that name wrong, right? It's like, okay, it can't be Mike Johnson, right?

Your piece, I thought, was really interesting

because it described who Mike Johnson was.

And you know, none of us actually do this.

And the headline was the polite zealotry of Mike Johnson.

And you wrote this shortly after he became the speaker.

And you start off by noting that when Johnson was asked by

Sean Hannity about where people could find out about his worldview. He said people should just pick up the Bible.

What did that mean? Peter, help me understand this guy.

It was an interesting response that he gave to Hanady.

I think for him, what it meant was that if you consult the Bible,

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