Hello and welcome to the weeds on the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Jane Kostin and joining me today are my special guests, Lacklain Marke and Acerwin

Sub sang of the Daily Beast and we are going to be talking about their new book, Thinking

in the Swamp, How Trump's Minions and Nisfits Poison to Washington.

But we're also going to be talking about Not the Book because one of the things that you

talk about in the book, you have a lot of anecdotes of the weirdness of Trump world.

But I want to get above that and talk about why writing this book was important in the

first place.

And so I actually want to start by, there's a moment very early in the book in which you

are detailing the story of a man named Walter Brockington who sued Trump ineffectually because

he believed that Trump had stolen his idea from Monopoly-esque board game that was called

Trump the Game.

And so there's this line, it's a throwaway line where you're quoting him as saying during

the 2016 GOP presidential primary that Trump is a character.

And he probably means that in the like, he's such a character kind of way, but it's interesting

because throughout the book, there's this idea that there's the idea of Trump.

There's Trump the amalgamation of what Hollywood means.

There's Trump the guy who yells at people all the time.

There's Trump the weird person who spins around in this chair.

When you were working on this book, did you ever get an idea of who you think Donald Trump

now president of the United States actually is and how much of this is the development

of a character?

...