Three years ago, Barton Swaim gave us an inside look at a bizarre moment in American politics. His book “The Speechwriter” was a memoir of his time working with South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, when Sanford went missing and then tried to cover up an affair by saying he had been out walking the Appalachian Trail.
Now, Swaim finds himself in the middle of another strange political moment. As opinion editor for the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard, he and his colleagues would normally support a Republican president. But this Republican president is Donald Trump. And that makes things tricky for a lot of conservatives in America, including Barton Swaim.
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Show notes:
- The Amazon page for "The Speechwriter"
- His author page at The Weekly Standard
- A piece for the Jewish World Review about Trump and "losing the plot"
- Barton's dad died in February ... here's a brief story about him
- A brief history of Mark Sanford and his "visit to the Appalachian Trail"
Other music in this episode:
Blue Dot Sessions, "Rabbit Hole"
New episodes of SouthBound will come out every other week on Wednesday. Subscribe:
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SouthBound is a production of WFAE. Our host is Tommy Tomlinson. Our producer is Nick de la Canal. Our audience engagement producer is Joni Deutsch, and our main theme comes from Josh Turner.