It's like all these grown-ass men, they all are hiding, not responding to subpoenas and letting a 26-year-old woman

Have to take all this heat, have to take these death threats, sexual violence threats, be smeared, be lied, and I mean, it's just shamedful

Tim Miller just released a new book called Why We Did It. It came out on the same day as Cassidy Hutchinson's

Explosive testimony before the January 6th committee. To me, I think that while this is shown her bravery

Like it just reveals that there was no, there were no grown-ups in the room. Miller asked a question at the heart of that committee's work

Why haven't there been more Cassidy's?

I'm Ryan Liza. This is Playbook Deep Dive

Playbook can be useful sometimes. Playbook can be useful. Yeah playbook can be useful. Yeah

Miller was a top aide to Jeb Bush at the start of the Trump era. He watched in horror as Trumpism took over the Republican establishment and his fellow GOP strategists jumped on the MAGA bandwagon

If you think the most important issue is stopping Donald Trump from getting a power again and democracy, as long as Donald Trump's in the mix, you're a Democrat

In his new book, he sets out to understand the mindset of those Republicans. I try not to have the book to be about like villains

Friends and colleagues who weren't all that different from him. Kevin McCarthy, Lindsey Graham, all people who have told us that they knew that he was an ad man

I needed to be stopped. But unlike him, had enthusiastically worked to elect Trump and then joined his administration. I'm alarmed

Like we've missed this window and if he decides to run again, he might win. People didn't step up when it was so obvious.

I blame the officials who misrepresent who they are and what they really think.

In one chapter, Miller traces the journey of Alyssa Thara Griffin, a top capital hill aide who couldn't bring herself to vote for Trump in 2016, but eventually ended up as Trump's communications director in 2020.

It's actually a very easy time to be a Trumper, as long as you can like emotionally and morally disconnect from everything you're reading.

But by December of that year, Griffin had had enough and resigned and discussed. Griffin had joined Miller and the ranks of the Never Trumpers, and she started to help other people in the Trump world do the same.

Most recently, it was Griffin who helped guide her good friend, Cassie Hutchinson, through the fraught process of breaking away from the Trump world, a journey that culminated in Hutchinson's devastating account of Trump's actions on January 6th.

Miller and Griffin met me at the Georgetown Club for lunch to talk about Miller's new book, their respective journeys navigating Trumpism.

White were not animals.

And what Hutchinson's testimony could mean for the future of Trump's grip on the Republican Party?

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