
The Destructionists
The Twenty-Five Year Crack-Up of the Republican Party
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Narrated by:
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Dana Milbank
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By:
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Dana Milbank
About this listen
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • A scalding history of twenty-five years of Republican attempts to hold on to political power by any means necessary, by a hugely popular Washington Post political columnist
"A thorough and scathing account of how the Republican Party fell prey to Trumpism."—The New York Times Book Review
In 1994, more than 300 Republicans under the command of obstructionist and rabble-rouser Congressman Newt Gingrich stood outside the U.S. Capitol to sign the Contract with America and put bipartisanship on notice. Twenty-five years later, on January 6, 2021, a bloodthirsty mob incited by President Trump invaded the Capitol.
Dana Milbank sees a clear line from the Contract with America to the coup attempt. In the quarter century in between, Americans have witnessed the crackup of the party of Lincoln and Reagan, to its current iteration as a haven for white supremacists, political violence, conspiracy theories and authoritarianism.
Following the questionable careers of party heavyweights Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Mitch McConnell, and Rudy Giuliani, and those of many lesser known lowlights, Milbank recounts the shocking lengths the Republican Party has gone to to maintain its grip on the American people.
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Critic reviews
"A thorough and scathing account of how the Republican Party fell prey to Trumpism."—The New York Times Book Review
"[Milbank] has well-honed edge as a commentator...[his] fans will not go away disappointed."—NPR
"Milbank compresses every awful political occurrence of the past quarter century into a page-turner that is both difficult to stomach and hard to put down."—Foreign Affairs
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Deep within the forbidding land encircled by the Washington Beltway lives the tribe known as Homo politicus. Their ways are strange, even repulsive, to civilized human beings; their arcane rites often impenetrable; their language coded and obscure. Violating their complex taboos can lead to sudden, harsh, and irrevocable punishment. Normal Americans have long feared Homo politicus, with good reason.
By: Dana Milbank
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Tired of Winning
- Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party
- By: Jonathan Karl
- Narrated by: Jonathan Karl
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Packed with new reporting, Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party tracks Trump’s improbable journey from disgraced and defeated former president to the dominant force, yet again, in the Republican Party. From his exile in Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump has become more extreme, vengeful, and divorced from reality than he was on January 6, 2021. His meddling damaged the GOP’s electoral prospects and his legal troubles were mounting. Yet he re-emerged as the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and the president-elect.
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Compelling and Terrifying
- By Shaz on 11-15-23
By: Jonathan Karl
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The Big Lie
- Election Chaos, Political Opportunism, and the State of American Politics After 2020
- By: Jonathan Lemire
- Narrated by: Jonathan Lemire
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In the more than five tumultuous, paradigm-shifting years of Donald Trump’s presidency and beyond, his near-constant lying has become a fixture of political life. It is inextricably linked with how his party behaves, how the Democrats respond to it, and how he remains relevant, even after a decisive loss in 2020. Jonathan Lemire brings his connections, profile, and reportorial instincts to bear in his first book that explores how this phenomenon shapes our politics. The Big Lie is the first audiobook to examine this unprecedented and tenuous moment in our nation’s politics.
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Don’t bother
- By Susan S. on 07-27-22
By: Jonathan Lemire
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Twilight of Democracy
- The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism
- By: Anne Applebaum
- Narrated by: Anne Applebaum
- Length: 5 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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From the United States and Britain to continental Europe and beyond, liberal democracy is under siege, while authoritarianism is on the rise. In Twilight of Democracy, Anne Applebaum, an award-winning historian of Soviet atrocities who was one of the first American journalists to raise an alarm about antidemocratic trends in the West, explains the lure of nationalism and autocracy. In this captivating essay, she contends that political systems with radically simple beliefs are inherently appealing, especially when they benefit the loyal to the exclusion of everyone else.
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Modern Dictators & President who wants to be them
- By AJ on 07-23-20
By: Anne Applebaum
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American Reckoning
- Inside Trump’s Trial—and My Own
- By: Jonathan Alter
- Narrated by: Jonathan Alter
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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As one of a handful of journalists allowed in the courtroom, for 23 days Jonathan Alter sat just feet away from the most dangerous threat to democracy in American history, watching the spectacle of the century: the felony trial of Donald Trump. Highly publicized but untelevised and thus largely hidden from public view, this landmark trial offered hope of real justice amid a grueling eight-year national ordeal and foreshadowed the drama of the 2024 presidential election.
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Good book
- By jeffrey on 03-23-25
By: Jonathan Alter
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It Was All a Lie
- How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump
- By: Stuart Stevens
- Narrated by: Dan John Miller
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Stuart Stevens spent decades electing Republicans at every level, from presidents to senators to local officials. He knows the GOP as intimately as anyone in America, and in this new book he offers a devastating portrait of a party that has lost its moral and political compass. This is not a book about how Donald J. Trump hijacked the Republican Party and changed it into something else.
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A party gone astray
- By Devin on 08-07-20
By: Stuart Stevens
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The Man Who Sold America
- Trump and the Unraveling of the American Story
- By: Joy-Ann Reid
- Narrated by: Joy-Ann Reid
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Candidate Trump sold Americans a vision that was seemingly at odds with their country’s founding principles. Now in office, he’s put up a "for sale" sign - on the prestige of the presidency, on America’s global stature, and on our national identity. At what cost have these deals come? Joy-Ann Reid's essential new audiobook, The Man Who Sold America, delivers an urgent accounting of our national crisis from one of our foremost political commentators.
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Good explanation of how we got to where we are
- By Caduceus26 on 07-13-19
By: Joy-Ann Reid
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The Conspiracy to End America
- Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy
- By: Stuart Stevens
- Narrated by: Jeff Bottoms
- Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Today’s Republican party is not a “normal” political party in the American tradition. It has become an autocratic movement masquerading as a political party. As Stuart Stevens argues in The Conspiracy to End America, if we look away from that truth, we greatly increase the likelihood that the America we love will slip away, never to return.
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Required Reading
- By Arturo Zendejas on 10-27-23
By: Stuart Stevens
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Beyond the Big Lie
- The Epidemic of Political Liars, Why Republicans Do It More, and How It Could Burn Down Our Democracy
- By: Bill Adair
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Bill Adair knows a lie when he hears one. Since 2008, the site he founded, PolitiFact, has been the go-to spot for media members and political observers alike to seek the truth in an increasingly deceitful world. Since the site’s launching, politics’ tenuous relationship with the truth has only gotten weaker—and weirder. In this groundbreaking book, Adair reveals how politicians lie and why.
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Beyond the Big Lie
- By Steve Tone on 10-22-24
By: Bill Adair
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Weapons of Mass Delusion
- When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind
- By: Robert Draper
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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The violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, was a terrible day for American democracy, but many people dared to hope that at least it would break the fever that had overcome the Republican Party and banish Trump's relentless lies about the stealing of the 2020 election. That is not what happened. Instead, “the big steal” has become dogma among an ever-higher percentage of American Republicans. What happened to the Republican Party, and America, during the Trump presidency is a story we more or less think we know.
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If you had told me ...
- By kimberly stewart on 10-30-22
By: Robert Draper
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White Poverty
- How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy
- By: Reverend Dr. William Barber II, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove - contributor
- Narrated by: Bill Andrew Quinn
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the most pernicious and persistent myths in the United States is the association of Black skin with poverty. Though there are forty million more poor white people than Black people, most Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, continue to think of poverty—along with issues like welfare, unemployment, and food stamps—as solely a Black problem. Why is this so? What are the historical causes? And what are the political consequences that result?
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Cannot be antiracist without the ties that bind
- By marwalk on 08-25-24
By: Reverend Dr. William Barber II, and others
What listeners say about The Destructionists
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- Robert Erickson
- 03-02-23
A good review to answer how we got here
This is a good review to show how bad or improper actions will have serious consequences in following years. This book explains when bad politicians are allowed a platform then later there are more difficult challenges to the core of democracy. This book should become a film documentary for a wider audience to understand who are/were our elected officials.
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-03-22
Connecting the Dots
This mandatory reading for all those who want to understand how we got to the politics of hate. I am 74 years old. I lived through all the sign post Milbank covers. I really needed someone to connect the dots for me…he did just that. I am greatly indebted to him!
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- asdf
- 10-13-22
Meticulous
Meticulously researched, this will anger, horrify, and terrify you. A "must" read. Please read it before you vote.
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-07-22
Great Summary
Nothing new in Dana's book, but it provides a great summary of where we are as a nation. It's a cold bucket of water on the head to hear such a point by point review of where the GOP is today.
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- Amazon Customer
- 07-21-24
Incredible
This book pulled everything out of my memory and put it together to make it make sense.
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- Susan Bowyer
- 09-24-22
Best history/analysis of GOP’s weaponization of hatred and division
I’ve listened to a lot of books about the GOP and Trumpism, and this is the best. It rejects the GOP as passive victims of Trump voters’ authentic rage, and instead shows that Trump and Trumpism are intentionally created weapons against democracy. Their silence about the evils of this era isn’t just negligent. For some, it’s just reckless failure to act when action is obviously required to prevent massive collateral damage. But for many, notably McConnell, it’s intentional. Trump is the GOP’s bomb, and destruction of democracy is the intended target, and sometimes it causes collateral damage to people the GOP values.
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- shackga
- 10-05-22
well written and how very true
Best book on the unfortunate state of the Republican party and hence the resultant state of our democracy. Should be required reading for all but the ones who need to read it the most won't.
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- Victoria Bowring
- 12-05-22
Democracy is still in danger!
This is a very insightful book which reminds people when the absence of truth started for the Republican lawmakers. Newt Gingrich had a key role in presenting a false narrative wherever he went.
Trump took it to an entirely different level and may still do damage. McConnell and his cronies should be ashamed of themselves, but they aren't.
God help us in 2024.
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- dan m
- 01-29-24
very informative
I definitely liked the reader. very well done cleared up some of my questions.
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- John C. Morris
- 10-07-24
A scary but true story!
Liked it all. Gives me great concern for the future of the U.S. and our democracy,
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