Hey everybody it's Joe Trippy and welcome back to a special guest episode of that trippy show.

This week we welcome a guest I've been excited to have on

for quite a while.

Author and journalist Tim Alberta,

who's been covering the MAGA movement longer than just about anyone.

What I'm excited to talk about is his perspective on where the GOP is today and where it's going to go.

His first book, American Carthage, looks at the rise of

Trump as an evolution of the GOP, a symptom of radicalization and polarization.

Now he's got a new book out and it's even it's just a must read.

The kingdom, the power, and the glory. American evangelicals in an age of extremism. I'm really looking forward to

talking about both of these in our discussion today. Tim welcome.

Hey Joe, thanks for having me on.

Alex, where do you want to get started?

Well, before we get to the book, Tim, I have to ask about your personal fall from Grace as it were.

I know you're a baseball fan. We're talking a little bit about Pre-Show and I think you at one point had dreams to be a baseball writer. I thought that was going to be my job too and then I fell into politics.

I'm curious how you went from like what sounds like the best job ever to writing books on

maggot like we I want to know really where I went wrong by asking you this question, but like how did you get into this?

Yeah, man there are days where I really do envision what life might have looked like had I found my way into sports writing and you know like right now I'd be getting ready to go down to Florida to watch pictures and catchers reporting as opposed to, you know, trekking around the early primary states.

Although, I guess in this case, there's really not much trekking around to do because there's really not a primary on either side.

But yeah, you know, my only real interest in journalism from the time I was pretty young,

like probably middle school age, was just in reading the sports page every day growing up and just being sort of enamored with this idea of, wow, like people get paid to go to games and just tell you know tell tell their

readers what happened at the games like what what kind of a dream job is that and so

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