Ben Rhodes

John, this is the interview I was looking forward to since I finished my book, I have to tell you, honestly.

I actually really thought about this, John, because...

I wrote my memoir, which was a very kind of raw experience, right?

It was like I didn't digest it at all.

I wrote that in a year.

That came out in 2018.

Then I very much, my last book was in my kind of foreign policy, global politics, pod save the world, if you will, self in terms of traveling around and understanding politics.

what had happened in Russia and China and Hungary under Viktor Orban.

And I was literally using the experiences, contacts, networks I had from being in that world.

And then this one is entirely, I wanted to go back into history because I had a sense that I could find a lot there, that you could understand this argument that we're having now

by tracing it back from the beginning.

And frankly, my original conceit was Obama and Trump kind of encapsulate, represent two different opposing stories that we've had throughout our history in competition with each other.

And I'm not an historian.

And so the vehicle I knew that I would choose is speeches.

And I found myself kind of returning to that core identity, that guy who showed up in the Obama campaign office

when, you know, you were the chief speechwriter, you were my boss.

I remember walking in from my think tank culture in DC and wow, my boss is wearing a t-shirt, you know, like this is a different vibe, you know.

Good thing I'm here.

Yeah.

But I say this actually seriously to you, like, because, you know, you've been through this.