What book critic Carlos Lozada learned by reading 150 plus books about the Trump era

Reliable Sources

CNN

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3.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 8 October 2020

⏱️ 35 minutes

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Summary

Carlos Lozada's new book "What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era" is about his exploration of Trump-related tomes, from insider tell-alls to works on race, gender and identity. He tells Brian Stelter that some of the most revelatory books about this era are barely about Trump at all. Among his many findings: "Accepting Trump's lies is not really about belief, it's about allegiance." Also: "We've made this era all about Trump... He is constantly the man at the middle of the story, and that may not be the wisest way to think about it." For example, Lozada says "we obsess over the border because Donald Trump obsesses over the border," but "a lot of the most significant stories about immigration are happening far from the border."

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Transcript

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0:00.0	What will an intellectual history of the Trump presidency look like?
0:07.0	And what can the library of books that explain the Trump years tell us right now? Those are a couple of the questions on this week's Reliable
0:15.0	Sources Podcast. So let's cue the music. I am Brian Stelter and this weekly
0:20.3	podcast edition of Reliable is our way of going in depth with media leaders and newsmakers.
0:27.2	There is so much we can learn from the stacks and stacks of books about the Trump years.
0:34.0	You know, the Trump presidency has been a boon to the publishing industry.
0:38.0	Of course, I know it firsthand with my recent book about Trump and Fox.
0:42.0	There are so many books that there is now a book about the Trump books.
0:48.8	Pulitzer Prize winner in Washington Post book critic Lozada, has read 150 of these Trump tomes, some of them
0:57.7	are tell-alls, you know, by the likes of John Bolton and Omarosa, but others are about what whiteness means in the two thousand teens.
1:06.8	These are books that are only tangentially about the Trump years and yet sometimes they're the most revealing.
1:14.8	Carlos's new book is called What Were We Thinking a brief intellectual history of the Trump era?
1:21.9	And he is out on his book tour now his virtual book tour and he's joining me. Carlos welcome to the program.
1:26.4	Thanks so much for happening Brian. So I'm always afraid I'm gonna get your title wrong. It's not what we were thinking. It's what were we thinking.
1:34.5	Like tell me the significance of the meaning behind the title. So there's no
1:40.3	question mark on the title. It's not what were we thinking, right? It's more of a
1:45.9	lament what were we thinking, but also I think it's just straightforward. The book attempts to explore how America's thinkers,
1:57.6	writers, intellectuals, academics, journalists grappled with Trump and Trumpism in the real time. My ambition was to
2:08.3	create a snapshot of the American mind during the Trump years.
2:14.0	Yeah, that's true. When I say this is a book about Trump books, no, no, that is selling it short.
2:18.0	I think you've written the final book of the first term of the Trump presidency.
2:24.0	And maybe, you know, if he loses the election,
	...

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