Tina Nguyen: Inside the Conservative Movement

Tina Nguyen:

The focus of the Republican Party driven by Trump is the fight of wokeism. Like the idea that there is a fundamental assault on the way of American life and culture via channels of elite influence to give more power in American life that should have belonged to them through merit.

Ken Harbaugh:

I'm Ken Harbaugh, and this is Burn the Boats, a podcast about big decisions.

My guest today is Tina Nguyen, a founding partner at Puck News, whose first job was working for Tucker Carlson.

Her new book, The MAGA Diaries, explains how young people are indoctrinated into the conservative movement. Tina has since turned her back on right wing politics and become one of MAGA's most insightful critics.

Tina, welcome to the show.

Tina Nguyen:

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Ken Harbaugh:

I've actually got an issue with your book. It made me laugh because it's actually pretty funny, and I was not expecting that.

My default reaction to anything with MAGA in the title is often revulsion, sometimes anger, but you have somehow kept your sense of humor about all of it. How do you manage that?

Tina Nguyen:

I think it's because one, I'm sort of a chaotic little monkey to begin with.

Two, one of the things that drew me to the movement in the first place was that it was at the beginning of what one could consider, like edgelord humor, early internet, really anarchical like sort of, I don't really care what society has to say about like pissiness and whatever.

And you didn't really think what that was going to lead to in the future.

And third, since I've known about this world, like way before anyone else has, my reaction to it has always been like, “Oh yeah, of course, I saw this coming. You know what, I'm just going to roll with it. I can't really stop it from where I sit right now. I'm just going to keep following along.”

Which I was talking to someone who was in the research field after January 6th, like days after. And he said that of course he was angry that people had not been paying attention to him in the lead up to this, but he would rather be angry than confused and scared.

Ken Harbaugh:

Yeah. Can you talk about that draw? What brought you into the movement?

It's hard for me to relate. All of my kids' friends run in entirely different circles, which I'm happy about.

But I think what a lot of people don't appreciate is how geared towards fun and entertainment and community building that youthful MAGA movement is. I mean, you talk about hanging out with Tucker as being a lot of fun.

And we're not going to sugarcoat it, we'll get to the dark side later, but part of Trump's appeal, part of the prophet him self’s appeal is his performative approach to politics and how he makes every engagement kind of a riot. I mean that double entendre intentionally.

Tina Nguyen:

So, the reason I became drawn to what I did not know was the movement at the time was one, there was a boy I was desperately in love with who also was Republican.

And two, I was a big nut about the founding fathers. Like I grew up in Boston. My mom was taking her PhD at Harvard at the time and always bring me on to campus. And I'm thinking, “Oh my God, these buildings are so old. 400 years. How did it get so old and how did it also last till now?”

So, the moment I started learning about the Revolutionary War, the ideals that people were fighting for, the way that all of these disparate colonies came together to declare independence from England and then build a country even though they were all disagreeing, was just a concept that was so beautiful to me and so idealistic to me.

That the moment I saw that the college my boyfriend was going to, had this research institution called the Salvatori Institute for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World. I'm just like, “Ooh, okay, go on.”

And then the moment you realize there's another institute connected to it from the outside called the Claremont Institute, whose motto is literally preserving the ideals of the American founding, like I was hooked at that point.

I could not believe there was an entire world of people dedicated to like tracking, understanding, and delivering on the promise that the founders made. That was so cool to me.

Ken Harbaugh:

That's, I think, most people's impression of how the intellectual life of conservatism looks and operates even for young people.

But you expose another side, which are the parties and the community building. You talk about Tucker Carlson riding your bike around the office and everyone having a blast.

Can you speak to that aspect of the draw that young conservatives feel into the movement?

Tina Nguyen:

The way that a party or social situation like that operates, I think has evolved over time. But at the very core, it's being a college student, learning that there's a troop of people, a community of people, like a whole world of people who are interested in the same things that you are to like a rather absurd degree.

And also, share at least a hesitation to be involved in campus student activism from the progressive side.

One, that's great. Two, you build a social circle that you didn't think existed in the first place and you feel at home. And three, there's a shiny goal waiting on the other side of that party. Like it is a job, it is a career, it's a life, it's a way of being. It's a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

And the fact that it comes along with a party where there may or may not have been some underage drinking is just even better.

Ken Harbaugh:

One of your, I think, most valuable insights is about the reason that people find themselves drawn to the movement.

You talk about your generation focusing on making sure the federal government is weakened and removed from elements of public and private life that it shouldn't be involved in. For our parents, it was defeating the Soviet Union.

But then you ask a very succinct but I think fundamental question, which is, what do the kids want today? What is it that young conservatives are after if it's not the defeat of an autocratic system like Russia's or the diminishment of the federal government?

Because in many ways they want an even more powerful federal government that can lock up its enemies. What is the ideological draw?

Tina Nguyen:

The reason I think that younger conservatism is so attractive and probably growing in global respects is that the focus of the Republican Party driven by Trump probably followed up by DeSantis and a whole bunch of hardliners who had kind of secretly nursed this for decades, is the fight of wokeism.

Like the idea that there is a fundamental assault on the way of American life and culture via channels of elite influence to give minorities both like ethnic, racial, and sexual more power in American life that should have belonged to them through merit largely. And more incinerate qualities the further down you go.

And that's something that a college student can very tangibly see on campus. Like if they express descent, their social life is suddenly going to be really curtailed. All of their classmates will just start leaping on them.

And initially it was just something kind of dorky and broad spread, but now, it's like, “Hey, I don't believe in abortion. Oh my God, everyone's trying to cancel me.” And that drives paper deeper and deeper into these communities to begin with.

I think the thing that stood out to me was when I was interviewing all of these young college students at a Turning Point USA event, and they were telling me that they were committed so hard to making sure that they were able to express their beliefs, but also in defiance of their peers.

I think one of the girls I was talking to mentioned something about how there was a rock climbing event held specifically for BIPOC, and she was like, “Wait, why can't like white people be part of this?”

And the interesting thing about her was that she was a black student who was thinking that, and she's now, the president of the LSU Turning Point USA chapter, or at least was at the time.

And so, that sort of sense of injustice, someone else could call it grievance, but they view it as injustice, is not just ingrained in them, but like a good opportunity for a group like Turning Point or whoever it was in the past to come on campus and be like, “Hey, that's really weird, right?”

“Do you want to invite Charlie Kirk or someone on campus to talk about how bad it is? And maybe like bring a whole bunch of progressives on to campus to start screaming at him.”

And at that point you're just kind of sold. You've got someone in the background in like a very powerful position who is willing to back you on campus.

Ken Harbaugh:

Does it seem like a coherent enough ideology though to power and sustain a long-term political movement? Because it does seem grievance based. It seems entirely oppositional.

I don't know how it informs something like foreign policy or healthcare policy or any of the things that government really should be doing.

How does a ideology based entirely in opposition to perceived and sometimes real slights actually fuel a political movement?

Tina Nguyen:

The beauty of the conservative movement is that one, it adapts to the times. And two, it ends up creating a whole bunch of intellectual and academic and political infrastructure in order to make it so.

Like what I'm describing are college students. Little baby college students, could not be older than 25. The moment you graduate though, if you are really committed to making sure this happens, you will find some way to get a whole bunch of your friends together and figure out policy prescriptions that you can sort of sign and sneak into the lawmaking process.

There was a very heavy emphasis on recruiting young lawyers to eventually execute on conservative visions through the legal process, either through lawsuits that come up through the system that end up in the Supreme Court or the big victory for this movement getting their ideological allies appointed as judges, federal judges.

So, one of the things that people really missed when the mask mandate was repealed, for instance, in like latter half of the Trump administration, was that the woman who had done it was a 30-year-old, like she was a federal judge in Florida who was 30.

And initially everyone in the mainstream media was like, “Oh my god, this girl's 30. She's clearly so dumb.”

And I started looking in her background and it turns out that she's part of a Claremont Institute program that identified young, promising lawyers, and was like, “Alright, here's how we think our vision of the federal government and the judicial system should be executed on.”

And the moment I saw that she was on like I think the Marshall Fellowship, I was like, “Oh, yep, there it is. There it is.” She believed this stuff from the get go. She was part of some sort of list. That list ended up in Trump's desk and he probably just signed off in it for like whatever reason.

And replacing a third of the empty like judicial seats on the appellate system is really dorky to I'd say a politics observer. But like that is something that has been really important for conservatives for a long time.

Oh, and one more thing to add into that. The person who kept those seats open was Mitch McConnell, who was in the Senate, and he was also a leadership institute alumni back in the ‘60s. Like if this movement goes back that long.

Ken Harbaugh:

A lot of casual observers are surprised that these conservatives inhabit these positions of enormous power, like this 30-year-old judge. And when a ruling comes down that shakes the political landscape, they try to figure it out.

One of the reviewers of your book described the conservative ecosystem you inhabited as a hidden world.

Is that a fair description? If it's hidden, is it done on purpose so that these earth-shaking moments can happen behind closed doors and then affect our entire lives?

Tina Nguyen:

Oh my God, it's absolutely not hidden at all. Like it's out in the public. You can just like walk into a bar in DC and see a group of conservatives hanging out under some banner of whatever institute's holding it at any given time.

The problem though is one, I don't think enough observers understand the intricacies of this world and just look at a whole bunch of conservatives and think, “Oh, they're conservatives. They're clearly insane. Oh my God, they're just so irrational and reactionary and stupid that they don't believe that there's any sophistication behind it.”

There have been histories written about this movement, like very detailed histories. There have been articles and books and so much content exists out there trying to explain what this movement is, but they always take it from an outside perspective.

And I think if you just don't grow up inside this movement or have an understanding of why it's a draw, you're inclined to think that it's silly and we'll never get anywhere.

And there's always this disdain that both historians and journalists have towards Republicans in general.

Like I think my superpower with this movement is one, I speak conservative, which is its own language altogether. And two, like I generally do have a love of the documents themselves and an appreciation of what the founders were doing.

And like I'm just not hostile to their ideas. I worry about what happens when you put those ideas inside a machine and an infrastructure like the conservative movement did. But like I'm still sort of an idealist at heart.

Ken Harbaugh:

I'd love you to describe more about your superpower, especially being at Politico and Vanity Fair, media institutions that I think have been lacking that native conservative insight. You brought that in a way that I don't think they even expected.

Can you share some of the stories of your encounters with editors and others who were shocked that you knew what you were talking about?

Tina Nguyen:

Oh my goodness. I have so many of them. I go into a couple of them in the book, but the reason that I started covering this world was right around this time that a Breitbart reporter was shoved by Corey Lewandowski, who was then Trump's campaign manager.

And the interesting thing was though, was that like there were people in the mainstream media who were like, “Wow, no, she's still a member of the journalism community and we still got to defend her.”

And yet there were all of these people who started coming out of the right being like, “No, this woman sucks. This woman is like evil. She's done X, Y, Z, yada, yada, yada.”

And I'm thinking, “Oh no, I know all of those people.” That is so interesting because like she is at an institution where I think she wanted to be a journalist, and yet it's connected to all these other guys that I know.

And what is Steve Bannon doing there? I thought I remembered like hearing about him in 2011 when he was doing some like movie thing and now, he runs Breitbart, and this is weird. And now, the Trump campaign's attacking her? And oh dear, oh dear.

And so, I'm talking about this out loud in the office and initially I kind of pitched this as a story and my editor goes, “I don't know, I don't really know if we are like into fringe crap.” And obviously I feel like really embarrassed and kind of questioning like whether I'm a good journalist at all.

But this editor, John Kelly, I will always, always give him credit for this. His mind changes after thinking about it. And he goes, “Hey, I want you to write about these guys. I want you to write about this incident and like really, really, really go deep into it.”

And that's sort of the relationship that happens to us over time. Like I bring him something that is absolutely kind of bonkers to him and then he thinks about it and then goes, “Wait, tell me why I should care?”

And that's always a challenge that I have with an editor. It's like, “I don't understand anything you're talking about. Everything you're talking about is just absolutely foreign to me. Why on earth should I care about this?”

But it's always a challenge and never an absolute psychological barrier that I can't break. And that relationship with John has actually preserved over time and now, he's my boss at Puck.

But yeah, like if I am lucky, I will have an editor who eventually believes me. If I do not, it's just becomes this giant war of attrition that will never ever, ever, ever end.

At Politico, I got so much pushback internally for writing in the lead up to January 6th that these movements were happening. That all of these people were coming to Washington, that there were militia members coming to Washington and proud boys and like all of these groups who I knew were really violent to begin with.

And then also had a coherent theory of what they should do in order to stop the government from doing what they were doing. Which in the case of January 6th, overturning what they thought was an illegitimate election.

And going into that, everyone's like, “This is fringe stuff on the internet. We don't report on just things that happen on the internet.”

And I'm just screaming, “This is becoming actionable policy. There are so many people who are coming to this, including very dangerous people.”

So, the story I ended up pitching in order to like get around that block was, “I'm going to go to the Capitol on January 6th and I'm going to interview people who are there to intimidate and harass lawmakers into voting for Donald Trump.”

And you know what happened? I ended up at January 6th, the morning of the insurrection, like in the vicinity of the capitol watching this play out in real time.

Ken Harbaugh:

But even you were surprised at the tonal shift in the crowd on January 6th. You met Proud Boys for the first time. You met people who were prepared it seemed like for combat before it even started.

When did you realize on January 6th that this would be a defining day for America?

Tina Nguyen:

I was crossing the street outside of the Capitol. I had been filing inside a Senate cafeteria when one of my editors was like, “Hey, it looks like there are some guys trying to hop the fence. Can you go check that out?”

And so, I get out of the Capitol literally minutes before it gets locked down.

And I think I made two critical mistakes going into this reporting. One was I assumed that the Capitol would be well secured, like it would be locked down. There was all of this like federal law enforcement, probably the National Guard who would show up and make sure no one got in.

And two, I thought that the rank and file of the like MAGA movement who had shown up that day were at least somewhat respectful of law enforcement.

Like I just come out of a summer where I was reporting on militias trying to help cops fight Antifa on the streets and stop looting and whatever.

And I was walking down the street trying to get a sense of how big this crowd was. And there was two lone officers trying to get people to stand on the other side of the street to keep constitution av clear.

And this guy just started screaming, “Just disobey, just disobey them.” And everyone in the crowd was getting all riled like, “Yeah, yeah, why is it that they're keeping us from the Capitol? The Capitol belongs to we the people. That building belongs to we the people.”

And the moment I started hearing that, it was like, “Oh, I'm going to get a little further away from this to try to observe this from the background and make sure that if something happens, I'm not going to get stampeded.”

And then they stormed the Capitol in front of me. And yeah, that was that.

Ken Harbaugh:

As a credentialed journalist with I can't remember if you were with Politico or Vanity Fair at the-

Tina Nguyen:

Politico.

Ken Harbaugh:

Politico at the time, a lot of people in that crowd would've seen you as an enemy of the people. I mean, their leader called you an enemy of the people. I'm referring to that Trump speech of course.

How did you personally feel about your safety, your security in that crowd on that day?

Tina Nguyen:

I thought I was well prepared. And the moment that you're well prepared for a crowd to turn hostile, the more you feel equipped to navigate it.

I had been talking to a war correspondent who had covered many, many, many civil protests in major cities across the world. And he was just constantly telling me in the lead up to this event, “Here's what you do in case of crowds stampedes. You have to have situational awareness of what is happening at all times.”

And one of the questions he asked me is, “When does it benefit you to identify yourself as a member of the press and when will it harm you?”

And in that moment, I was like, “Okay, no, I should not be identified as a member of the press.” I put my badge away.

I had dressed in advance as someone who was really like non-threatening and little and tiny and cute, which is easy because I'm short. And just like someone who was not there to drill them and ask them what they were doing, or worst-case scenario for them, try to get their faces on camera.

Like I could continue to report, I could continue to observe what was happening around me and record broadly what was happening because people in public can be taped.

But adopting the practices of journalism while looking at like a journalist would've been dangerous to me.

And later, I remember this guy from the AP who was dressed like a photographer, like big vest, all black clothing, like had cameras and lanyards dangling from his neck. People looked at him and went, “You're a member of the lying press.” And then started beating him up.

Yeah, there's just so many things in any sort of situation like that that you have to consider.

And honestly, that war correspondent was also at the Capitol covering January 6th. So, I just kind of felt psychologically safe knowing that like if he's there, and he is not going to rescue me, he's made that very clear, I'm able to handle this on my own. Let's go.

Ken Harbaugh:

Did it take you a while to process what had happened or did you know in the moment as you saw the Capitol being stormed that this was going to change American politics?

Tina Nguyen:

I wasn't quite sure how it would change American politics is the thing. Like this was a goal that I had had nightmares about for years leading up to this, the moment that I saw that Trump was getting a bump in 2015 primary polling.

The question though always for me was were the systems in the American government robust enough to hold back this movement? Were they strong enough? Were the American people confident enough and knew what to do in order to prevent a wave of election denialists getting into Congress?

And that was something I just like could not let go of throughout reporting on the 2022 midterms because you saw all of these Trump backed election deniers beat their opponents in the primary, get into the general election, get like unnervingly close to their democratic counterparts.

And eventually when you realize that like that red wave that had been promised based on the fact that Biden's economy and handling of COVID had made him pretty unpopular among the American people, like it did not happen.

McCarthy only got control of the House by like seven, like no, four votes. And that was sort of a moment for me to step back and go, “Alright, cool, this is like strong enough for now. I don't know how long that is going to last and I don't know how creative this movement will be in trying to get around it.

Can I bring up a piece of reporting that I did really recently at Puck?

Ken Harbaugh:

Yeah.

Tina Nguyen:

So, there's been a lot of stories leaking into the media about how there is like an administration and waiting for Trump when he comes back in and everyone's going to slot themselves into the federal system to purge the like administrative state of non-believers and people who had opposed a Trump agenda the first time coming in and whatnot.

And here's what they would do in response. I did a little bit of digging and it turns out it's not that there is just one coherent plan, there are two competing plans.

One of them is from the Heritage Foundation, which is more conservative and has a very specific vision for how the country should be run. And probably they're trying to drag it back to the original Burken definition of conservatism but addressing Trump era issues.

And then there was this other group called the America First Policy Institute that had been dedicated to creating a Trump administration.

And the difference between Heritage and Trump was that heritage at least like promotes itself as being faithful to the constitution. AFPI is just going, “You know what, we're just going to make sure this is weak enough for Trump to do whatever it is he wants.”

Like the migrant ban, for instance, a Heritage person would be like, “Sir, that's unconstitutional.” An AFPI person would be like, “Nope, let's do it. Let's do it, Mr. President. I'm going to make it happen for you.”

And these institutions had been at like healthy competition with each other for donor money and for retention and for influence. The Trump campaign was like, “Please stop talking about this. You are freaking everyone out. Please stop talking about this.”

But that impetus is still there inside the movement. And Trump is like ultimately the person who decides who gets put into these administrative positions.

And the fact that the conservative movement has had seven years of cogitating on what that would look like is something that I think people should pay attention to.

Ken Harbaugh:

I'd like to put a link to that article in our show notes. Send that to me when you get a chance. And what does AFPI stand for again?

Tina Nguyen:

The America First Policy Institute.

Ken Harbaugh:

Well, that says it, right?

Tina Nguyen:

Yeah, exactly.

Ken Harbaugh:

The America First Policy Institute.

You have this paragraph in your book that I think coins the phrase the infinite fringe. And I love that framing, and I think you're quoting someone from The Daily Caller who shares this observation.

He said, “No one owns the commons of conservatism. So, it's extremely vulnerable to outside subversion. This subversion would not have been able to occur without the internet. Praise be.

When I think of the Heritage Foundation and these other stalwart institutions of conservatism having their turf encroached upon by groups like the American First Policy Institute, it feels like that's what you're talking about.

The center of conservatism can no longer hold because no one actually controls those conservative commons and you have groups like AFPA taking over the real estate.

Is that an — I mean, I think the answer is pretty obvious, but seems like an existential threat to the conservative ideal.

Tina Nguyen:

Absolutely. Look, it's not like the conservative movement has never faced this threat before. The things I kept going back to when I was reporting at Vanity Fair is like, why is there no one in the conservative movement who is able to tell these guys stop doing what you're doing?

Like if you go back to the ‘60s and ‘70s, William F. Buckley is widely credited with making sure that the John Birch Society, which was like nativist and conspiratorial driven and literally thought that every single member of the Kennedy administration was secretly a Soviet spy.

He knew that that movement was going to be poisonous to the ideal of conservatism that he had that was eventually shuttled into the White House via Ronald Reagan.

But he spent so much political capital and so much time and like literally put the number of subscriptions that his magazine National Review had at risk by consistently constantly writing about how terrible the John Birch Society was.

People would send in letters to him going like, “How dare you stop these patriots?” And he's like, “No, this is bad. And this is why.” He would have meetings with member like politicians saying, “Do not engage with the John Birch Society.” And it worked.

The common phrase was that he drummed the John Birch Society out of conservatism. And I was always like, “So, why can't the National Review replicate that during the Trump administration?”

And I realized it was because they no longer had the final say on what was and was not conservatism because they did not have the only magazine or publication that was the armor door of what was and was not conservatism.

Anyone who was not published in that magazine back in the day could no longer be published in that magazine and they were out.

But now, these guys can take their followings to the internet, say, “I've been silenced by National Review, I've been canceled by National Review. Follow me. I will not be silenced.” And then that readership will gravitate towards them.

I mean, you see that happen with Tucker Carlson, literally right now. He gets kicked off of Fox News, everyone's like, “Oh, he is no longer on Fox News. He is not going to be as influential.” And then he starts his own streaming service.

Does it necessarily mean that he's going to be as powerful as he was on Fox? No. Does it diminish Fox's power and draw that he's doing his thing somewhere else? Absolutely.

Ken Harbaugh:

You're suggesting that the difference is largely mechanical. That in the ‘60s and ‘70s, the reason that extremists and hatemongers could be driven out of conservatism was because of how the media ecosystem operated.

I would submit that there's also a moral piece of it as well in that there were people with real courage and patriotism and a moral backbone who were willing to stand up and risk their magazines and their careers and imperil short-term wins for the long-term ideals.

And William F. Buckley, I don't agree with him on a lot of his ideas, but he risked his movement in the short term to stand up to the John Birch Society. And eventually the Reagan revolution was ushered in.

I can't think of many analogs today to that kind of long-term moral courage. It is also very myopic. And I think Lindsey Graham was right when he said, “If we embrace Trump, the conservative party will be destroyed and we will deserve it.”

Yet that's what everybody with their myopic thinking seems to be doing. Am I being too hard on today's Republican leaders?

Tina Nguyen:

Probably, although I also believe that the reason it was harder for this institution that was using old tactics to push against Donald Trump was powerless against Donald Trump. And it is social media.

Like in December, 2015 or so, the National Review came out with this massive entire issue titled Against Trump. And it was a giant array of conservative commentators from to Tomi Lahren to like S. E. Cupp like zeroing in saying, “Trump is not a conservative, Trump is not a good Republican. This is why he's not going to protect your ideals.”

And Trump instead just like exists on Twitter going, “Oh, they're all losers, they're all fake, they're all sad.” And distracting everyone who probably would've taken their cues from National Review and dragging them onto his side, first and foremost, taking away the clicks and subscriptions that National Review would have gotten.

And then also turning it around and using it to harass in a much more tangible form like Republicans and conservatives on the ground.

It is so fast, it is faster than one could even think of putting together a coherent paragraph that tries to counter what Trump is saying. Trump himself is a singular figure who is just like, “You know what? I don't care. I'm going to say a conspiracy theory out loud, and I have an army of people who will follow me to do it.”

And it has a massive demoralizing effect on people inside the conservative movement who thought that Trump was absolutely not one of them, but one, will just change his beliefs when necessary.

Two, people will be totally okay with it. And three, turn that around and attack people who were trying to oppose Trump in the first place.

So, I don't know, people like Heritage and National Review and all of these places tried to hold that as long as they could.

But the competition as you were talking about rose up, they lost their own influence to that competition and either it was go along with the flow or become completely irrelevant.

Ken Harbaugh:

Yeah, I guess I'm just still bothered by the mechanical framing because your use of that National Review example I think is telling because just about every one of those contributors to that edition has now, come on side and they're going to endorse Trump in 2024 with a few very rare exceptions.

I mean, Chris Sununu, what, just last week said that, yeah, he'll vote for Trump if he's the nominee. I mean, every one of them is falling in line and just I don't see the moral courage anymore that you saw from their forebears, folks like William F. Buckley.

Tina Nguyen:

Yeah, that I couldn't really pin down. Like I cover the conservative movement as an institution in and of itself.

The individual actors within said movement, all of their motivations vary so much. Like it's either fear, it's either a terrifying realization that they're losing influence.

Or it's, “This is my livelihood. I've built my entire life on this belief. If I stand up and take this stance, I will lose my job. I will lose my friend group. I will lose the entire career I've built over the years.”

“If I decide to say I'm someone who's trying to oppose this, that entire like society that I've known since I was in high school is now, going to consider me a traitor.”

It's not like you can just retire and become a consultant or something, or move out of DC. It's this element of like loyalty that you are absolutely just junking.

And I go into this in the book a little bit, but there's also a part of me as I cover this movement as someone who is not even like taking an active stance against it. I feel kind of conflicted too. Like I would not be a journalist at all.

I would have absolutely no career if I hadn't had these internships, if I hadn't met these people. If Tucker Carlson hadn't done me a giant solid and like given me a recommendation to the job I had when I moved to New York. And turning the mirror on them is kind of risky.

Ken Harbaugh:

And you're not just talking about career risk, you're talking about real fear. I mean, you go into this in the book a little bit. If you were a pariah from the progressive political world, you wouldn't be scrubbing the internet of every private mention of a few.

But you have to do that as someone who left conservative politics and is now, reporting on it. You are afraid for your safety.

Tina Nguyen:

Yeah, exactly. One of the things that like really terrified me and I think pushed my leaving the movement altogether was not just the fact that I had this ex-boyfriend who became a notorious internet troll who would like dox people online and make threats and fight literally everyone. It was that he was getting support from within the movement to execute on that vision.

I think at one point, Peter Thiel was giving him money to come up with these like various ideas on how to like deal with members of the press who were criticizing Thiel.

And if he were just like a normal standalone like troll, I don't think the progressive movement would have invested as much as they did in him.

But this was also the time that they were giving money to Project Veritas, the people who take hidden camera videos of like reporters or Democrats doing terrible things and then putting them on the internet going like, “Oh my God, this is bad.”

There were also groups like Campus Reform, which is backed by Heritage that go onto college campuses and say like, “Ooh, look at this like terrible protests that these progressive libs are doing. I'm putting their faces on the internet forever.”

The fact that that got so much attention and willingness to be invested in, at a certain point you're just like, “Alright, time to be paranoid forever.”

Ken Harbaugh:

I want to go back to courage for a second because I don't think you are giving yourself enough credit for the bravery it took to leave the movement and then report on it.

And I would love to see you apply that same standard to some of the people you are covering who exhibit absolutely none of that kind of courage when standing up to the lies and the conspiracy theories and things like the great replacement theory that is leading to real violence.

It's not just a matter of how the media ecosystem operates, it's about the courage of the individuals within it, of which you're an example.

Tina Nguyen:

I mean, that's very kind of you to say. Look, I'm a journalist. My duty is to witness. I am not an advocate for anything. I am not a person who should tell people how they should live their lives. That is not my duty. That is not the position I even feel comfortable taking.

Like people have asked me to do that and it would've been horrifically lucrative for me to stand up and be like, “Oh yes, I condemn my former colleagues. I think they're terrible people.”

But I think as a journalist, my service is to reflect the truth and to capture it as broadly, and as accurately, and as in depth as my skill, and my background, and my knowledge allows me to do.

And I will publish that. I will try to get as many people to read it as possible. What people do with that information is truly up to them.

But the reason I left the movement was because I wanted to be a journalist. Like I entered the movement because they said that there were internships in journalism in the summer of 2009, and you had to be a liberty minded student.

And I saw what the ultimate cost of that would be, which would to be literally twist the truth in order to execute an agenda. And I just can't do that anymore. Like I can't do it for one part. I can't do it for the other side, and I'm just going to kind of go with what I see. And I'm not beholden to anyone.

And I'm certainly not going to be trying to get people to like feel guilty or change their minds or double down or do whatever it is that they want, but I'm here to reflect the truth. So, do with that what you will.

And I'm sorry if that's not like a good answer or a satisfying answer, but I've dug into myself for five or six years seeing if that was the type of person I would be and I'm not.

Ken Harbaugh:

Well, it's certainly a more satisfying answer than most self-described professional conservatives give. So, I appreciate it.

At one point in the book, however, you make an equivalent argument between AOC and Ali Alexander. I think you're trying to convince one of your editors that you want to cover the progressive movement because your intuition at the time is that they operate in similar ways.

Do you feel like that is still true? I guess what I'm hoping to get out of you is a recognition that there is something fundamentally different about modern conservatism, especially the youth-driven modern conservatism when it comes to democracy itself.

Tina Nguyen:

Oh, it's absolutely different. It totally is absolutely different. And I do think I acknowledge that pretty explicitly in the book in that like modern conservatives are far more creative and I would say a bit more destructive than progressives ever were.

I think progressives are limited one, by a system that does not immediately facilitate their goals, and plans, and visions like the conservative movement does. Ali Alexander was backed by billionaires for a while before they cut him off, but it was still enough time for him to gain a certain level of influence.

And I think progressives are definitely hampered by this sense of idealism that the world just needs to be convinced to move forward. And if someone is like, “No, that's not how people think.” It's just over their heads.

And you can't just like logic and reason and like moral arguments someone into following you. And that has been why the conservative movement's way more successful.

It's easier to remind people how good things were in the past than lay out a vision of the future that looks really confusing to a lot of people and maybe threatens their current way of life.

Ken Harbaugh:

Last question because we are out of time. You still have Tucker Carlson's cell number. You texted him after he was fired, I think you said, “Bro, what's up?” Do you still have that kind of relationship with him?

Tina Nguyen:

It's clearly very different these days. Like I also just text everyone, bro. Like that's part of the humor and casual-nate like relationship that I have with pretty much everyone I ever encounter.

I've frequently been chastised by my editors to be a little bit more buttoned up and professional and I've also just can't find that within myself either.

But the other thing that I consider my superpower in reporting on this movement is that like I just don't approach any of what they say with any sort of like fear or dismissal. I'm just sort of like, “Oh yeah, I know this. You don't have to explain any of this to me.”

Like I once called it like I've skipped 12 levels of right wing Duolingo. So, like just being casual is like not something I think would indicate a deep emotional connection or relationship to someone. But it's just like, “Here I am, what's up? Tell me what's going on in your mind.”

Ken Harbaugh:

Daily Caller isn't on your LinkedIn profile. Is that an oversight?

Tina Nguyen:

Yeah, that was an oversight. I'm not really a LinkedIn person to be quite honest.

Ken Harbaugh:

It’s kind of a meta question. Do you have to hide that part of your background being at places like Political and Vanity Fair now? Or do they appreciate it?

Tina Nguyen:

Well, now, they appreciate it because here we are in American politics and society, and I am the MAGA whisperer.

But when I applied for Vanity Fair, I took that off because I was having my resume reviewed by a professional mentor and he was like, “You were only there for three months and this is absolute poison for the Vanity Fair hiring system.” And I'm like, “Alright, cool. I'm taking that off.”

And I genuinely don't think I would've made it past HR if they saw the Daily Caller on my resume. I really don't.

Ken Harbaugh:

Well Tina, I'm glad you spent those months there. Your insight into that movement is invaluable. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Tina Nguyen:

Thanks for having me.

Ken Harbaugh:

Thanks again to Tina for joining me. Make sure to check out a book, The MAGA Diaries.

Thanks for listening to Burn the Boats. If you have any feedback, please email the team at [email protected]. We're always looking to improve the show.

For updates and more, follow us on Twitter @Team_Harbaugh. And if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to rate and review.

Burn the Boats is a production of Evergreen Podcasts. Our producer is Declan Rohrs and Sean Rule-Hoffman is our audio engineer. Special thanks to Evergreen executive producers Joan Andrews, Michael DeAloia, and David Moss.

I'm Ken Harbaugh and this is Burn the Boats, a podcast about big decisions.