Hi, I'm Anna Marie Cox. Welcome to With Friends Like These. Today is the day we check

in with my friend and yours Rick Wilson, former practitioner of the Dark Arts on the Republican

side. Now one of us. Rick, hi, how are you?

I am well thank you. I had some good news yesterday afternoon that the new book premiered on

the New York Times hardcover bestseller list at number five and on the combined bestseller

list, which is ebooks and hardcover at number four. My goodness, Rick. I mean, high spirits.

You know, we talked once about how when you decided to go the never trump route, you felt

like you were risking things. You were risking your career. Yeah. Yeah. I remember that.

And you know, I was saying yesterday, I gave a speech last night at the Commonwealth Club.

And I've told you this before, you know, I sleep well. I'm fine. I don't I don't ever like

doubt that I'm doing the right thing. But it does feel sometimes like, you know, this

was some sort of carmic moment of, of, you know, getting myself pulling the ejection

handle at exactly the right moment in some weird, some weird personal ways.

That might be a good segue to a question I was going to kind of put off. But I think

it seems like a good time to ask because I did call you one of us. And I know that on policy

questions, you've had some what's, you know, I would call evolution or considered changes.

You might think. All right. And I know you've also have policies that you're still on

the side that you were five years ago. Are you one of us though? Like do you think what,

you know, somebody just said this to me about five minutes ago on Twitter. And some got

some mauga was like, Oh, you're a Democrat. We always knew it. Her and somebody else responded.

He's not a capital D Democrat. He's a small D Democrat. And, and, and I think that's,

that kind of struck me just a minute ago. And, and I think in some ways like my belief

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