Why We Did It Quotes

“One big misconception about Washington is that money is the straw that stirs the drink. Activist types always demand we look to the money! Sometimes they are right, but the driving motivator for most during the Trump era was not a desire for riches. This town is not filled with Gordon Gekkos. More often, it’s the other, more egocentric motivators that drive nefarious actions in D.C. Raising money remains important, but fundraising is really about status and power.”
― Tim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell

“No matter which role they were in, staffers began to see themselves as tacticians in this made-for-TV blood sport rather than as functionaries in a system that is aimed to produce the best policy outcomes for their fellow citizens.”
― Tim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell

“You’ll also see how the Republican ruling class dismissed the plight of those we were manipulating, growing increasingly comfortable using tactics that inflamed them, turning them against their fellow man.”
― Tim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell

“Senators like Ted Cruz and congressmen like Matt Gaetz aspire to be multiplatform entertainers more than they care about governing.”
― Tim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell

“We repped ’murica in a jejune back-to-back world war champs kinda way and could cite chapter and verse of Reagan’s Liberty State Park homily declaring that our nation’s golden door was the last best hope of man on earth.”
― Tim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell

“Bannon had taken a shine to the Fox News anchor he considered a rising star. In a leaked private email, he said Gutfeld was a “brilliant cultural commentator who really got pop culture, the hipster scene, and advant [sic] garde.”
― Tim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell

“Why in the fuck did the vast, vast, vast majority of seemingly normal, decent people whom I worked with go along with the most abnormal, indecent of men? And why hadn’t I seen it coming? If we are to summon even a hint of value from our manifest failures throughout this whole sordid mess, to find any guideposts for bringing people into the light—those were the questions that needed answering. Answering them required plumbing the complicated motivations of real, living humans.”
― Tim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell

“He contained not a single honorable attribute they would want their child to emulate. He had an empty set of virtues. Throughout his entire life, at every opportunity, he had screwed the people who worked with him. He had bilked the innocent victims who had signed up for his myriad scams, only to be left bankrupt. And he did it in order to fill the bottomless black hole within him that required boundless validation and indulgence for sustenance. He was constitutionally incapable of shame or self-reflection. Even his biggest apologists admitted that the best way to get him to do the right thing was to prey on his insecurities.”
― Tim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell

“Should it have come as a surprise that a charlatan who had spent decades duping the masses into joining his pyramid schemes and buying his shitty products would excel in such an environment? Someone who had a media platform of his own and a reptilian instinct for manipulation? Someone who didn’t hesitate to say the quiet part aloud?”
― Tim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell

“But my soul required coming to terms with something that was more intimate than that. A question that I had grappled with throughout the entire Trump era. Why in the fuck did the vast, vast, vast majority of seemingly normal, decent people whom I worked with go along with the most abnormal, indecent of men? And why hadn’t I seen it coming?”
― Tim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell

“This is Alex Jones, after all. The human ass-pimple best known for defaming and harassing the mourning parents whose innocent little children had just been executed by a monster at Sandy Hook Elementary School.”
― Tim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell

“Why We Did It is a book about the people who submitted to every whim of a comically unfit and detestable man who crapped all over them and took over the party they had given their life to. It’s about the army of consultants, politicians, and media figures who stood back and stood by as everything they ever fought for was degraded and devalued. The people who privately admitted they recognized all the risks but still climbed aboard for a ride on the SS Trump Hellship that they knew would assuredly sink.”
― Tim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell

“For example, the RNC for years has been sending out unconscionable mailers to every elderly conservative in America. These letters are made up almost exclusively of hyperbole and ad hominem and conspiracies. They add absolutely zero to the political discourse. But they “work” in the sense that they are effective at keeping the olds upset so that they continue sending in their Social Security money.”
― Tim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell

“Caroline has been sucked in by the cult. She is obsessed with Trump and adores him, as incommodious as that may seem. She’s the masochistic follower who feels a compulsion to be tested, abused, and forced to prove they are deserving of the leader’s love over and over and over again. And like many of our parents and grandparents and friends, she’s become unreachable, thanks to consuming petty grievances and an impenetrable media bubble.”
― Tim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell

“Trump having the ability to trick a mob of rubes into storming the Capitol wasn’t a reason to stop enabling him, it was more evidence that his mob must be obeyed.”
― Tim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell

“If Crooked Hillary became president, that would be catastrophic because humina humina humina I’m required to say this for my career to survive.”
― Tim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell

“One of the more perverse parts of D.C. culture is that many inhabitants turn their weddings into these quasi-networking events, either out of ambition or a lack of real-life friends or both.”
― Tim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell

“From Harvard to Congress, Stefanik had put her personal ambition first and she wasn’t stopping now. Muslim Bans. Sexual assault apologetics. Attempting to make a former game show host an unelected autocrat by advancing fabricated conspiracies about our elections being fraudulent. She chose to go along with this because it was her path to power. And all indications are that if Trump runs for president again, she will have her eye on the penultimate rung on the striver’s ladder, the vice presidency.”
― Tim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell

“That” thing Christie and Priebus so desperately needed was their little fix. Getting calls. Feeling important. Remaining relevant. Being In The Mix. Once you’ve already determined that “that” is the objective, the justifications only need to match the desired outcome. And so Little Mixes like Christie and Priebus find themselves wrapped in a pretzel of their own rationalizations.”
― Tim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell

“If even someone like Chuck, one of the sharts of humanity, eventually saw Trump for the malevolent con man that he is, what does that say about the rest who still excuse him?”
― Tim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell

“I felt like everything I ever knew and believed about my country, my career, my colleagues were a lie. The Americans I most despised had taken over the country I loved, bringing almost everyone I had once looked up to along with them.”
― Tim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell

“Donald Trump was the snake. Everyone knew he was the snake. He told us he was the snake. Yet when the snake offered his spoiled fruit, these otherwise intelligent people took from the tree and ate it.”
― Tim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell

“We were handing out little key bumps of cocaine, turning our own supporters into addicts, and then telling ourselves there wasn’t a problem. They just need another bump to stay level. And another. And another.”
― Tim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell

“Why We Did It is a book about the people who submitted to every whim of a comically unfit and detestable man who crapped all over them and took over the party they had given their life to. It’s about the army of consultants, politicians, and media figures who stood back and stood by as everything they ever fought for was degraded and devalued. The people who privately admitted they recognized all the risks but still climbed aboard for a ride on the SS Trump Hellship that they knew would assuredly sink.”
― Tim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell