Matt and Sam talk to Robert Draper about his reporting from the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and how the Republican Party "lost its mind" in the months that followed.
For years now on Know Your Enemy, we've taken the January 6, 2021 insurrection as a glimpse of Trumpism unbound—not a few naive Q-anon types and tourists bumbling around, and not an excuse to be blackmailed into voting for Democrats, but a violent prelude to what a second Trump term would be like, a judgment that, sadly, has been entirely vindicated. One reason we've taken this perspective is Robert Draper's exceptionally insightful reporting from the Capitol that day and the days that followed, beginning with being in the Capitol on January 6 and seeing first hand the MAGA mob's unfolding violence, then following figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Kevin McCarthy, and others who followed Dear Leader's coattails to power (or attention), offering fascinating portraits of the menagerie of conspiracy theorists, liars, and frauds at the center of power in Trump's Washington. We discuss what Draper experienced on January and what he's learned since about the motivations behind, and meaning, of the riot, then ask him about Greene, Nick Fuentes, and Charlie Kirk, all of whom he's profiled in the last year.
Sources:
Robert Draper, Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind (2022)
— To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq (2020)
— Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush (2007)
— "'I Was Just So Naïve': Inside Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Break With Trump," New York Times Magazine, Dec 29, 2026
— "Once He Was 'Just Asking Questions.' Now Tucker Carlson Is the Question," New York Times Magazine, Nov 15, 2025
— "Nick Fuentes: A White Nationalist Problem for the Right," New York Times Magazine, Sept 9, 2025
— "How Charlie Kirk Became the Youth Whisperer of the American Right," New York Times Magazine, Feb 10, 2025
And please check out the new record from KYE's own Will Epstein, "Yeah, Mostly."
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