Michael Gerson

This was all of conservative media.

This was Michael Gerson.

The sainted Michael Gerson wrote endlessly about what a divisive, incompetent, idiot Barack Obama was and how sinister he was.

until Trump won and suddenly all of his evangelical friends turned out to be the monsters we told him they

were.

And he was very, very shocked by that because Michael Gerson and all these people live in a fucking bubble.

Anyway, he was the great, Barack Obama was the great Poupon fancy man.

Mr. Apology Tour, who was practically giving the country away.

And I think the hardest kind of speaking out is when you break from those around you who share much of your worldview and And there have been a number of evangelicals in recent years.

And I think of Russell, I think of, you know, Michael Gerson and Beth Moore and many others.

And I just think that's a incredibly difficult thing to do, to stand so deeply on your values and your beliefs that you're willing to push back at those you care about, who care about you.

And so, Russell, if I had a hat, I would take it off to you.

Is Josh Bolten here? Um, Josh Bolten was the deputy chief of staff for George Bush.

And, um, he talked to Mike Gerson about how if they put into, uh, the State of the Union address a case to, to fight AIDS in Africa, that would be a great counterbalance to going to war in Iraq.

Tell everyone, though, who Mike Gerson is.

So Mike Gerson-

A lot of people probably know, but just-

Yeah.

Sorry, thank you, yep.

So Mi- [laughs] getting, getting, uh, getting some tips from the, the side.

John Donnelly, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, Michael.

I'm really happy to be here.

So we're talking today-- Well, first of all, I should start with congratulations.

I'm curious, in the process of writing this book and going back to that record, did your own understanding of PEPFAR change?

Yeah.

Thanks, Michael.

That's, that's a great question to start with.

interesting point.

And the thing is, it's Michael Gerson who wrote for the first Bush had his expression, which I've just loved.

I've never get out of my head.

It's called the soft bigotry of low expectation.

So I think Cheney was very definitely in their orbit.

Another very important person, maybe underrated, is Michael Gerson.

who was the speechwriter and one might say sort of moral confidant of George W. Bush.

He wrote those marvelous speeches about how everyone on the planet was yearning to be delivered from non-democratic governments by America, which stood for universal democratic values.

When they broke for Trump...

The people like Michael Gerson and David French going, oh my God, these are my friends.

What happened to them? Dude, they've always been this way.

They've always been biggest.

Well, you should have listened to liberals 25 years ago, but you were busy demonizing us 25 years ago and you couldn't hear us.

And all their writings about their agonizing writings about what happened to my beautiful evangelical movement.

Well, Michael Gerson passed away.

So that happened.