Know Your Enemy: The Infernal Triangle

Historian and journalist Rick Perlstein explains what Democrats and the media are (still) getting wrong about the threat from Trump and the far right.

Know Your Enemy is a podcast about the American right co-hosted by Matthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell. Read more about it here. You can subscribe to, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher, and receive bonus content by supporting the podcast on Patreon.

The author of several excellent books about the history of American conservatism, including The Invisible Bridge, Nixonland, and Reaganland, Rick Perlstein makes his triumphant return to Know Your Enemy. Drawing on Rick’s wealth of historical knowledge, as well as his American Prospect column—entitled “The Infernal Triangle”—we explore the failures of American media elites and the Democratic Party to reckon with Donald Trump and his antecedents on the far right. What are the habits and genres of American journalism that inhibit an adequate accounting of Trump’s rise and influence? Why do Democrats tend to adopt “conservatism lite” when faced with a far-right opponent? How has Rick’s perspective on studying the right changed since he began his work in the 1990s? And how will future historians make sense of these times? Listen to find out!

Further Reading:

Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (2009)

— I Thought I Understood the American Right. Trump Proved Me Wrong. New York Times (2017)

— The Polling Imperilment, American Prospect (2024)

— The Election Story Nobody Wants to Talk About, American Prospect (2024)

— Project 2025 … and 1921, and 1973, and 1981, American Prospect (2024)

W. Joseph Campbell, Lost in a Gallup: Polling Failure in U.S. Presidential Elections (2020)

Isaac Arnsdorf, Finish What We Started: The MAGA Movement’s Ground War to End Democracy (2023)

Phoebe Petrovic, Right-Wing Activists Pushed False Claims About Election Fraud. Now They’re Recruiting Poll Workers in Swing States. ProPublica / Wisconsin Watch (2024)

Clare Malone, The Face of Donald Trump’s Deceptively Savvy Media Strategy, New Yorker (2024)

Matthew Sitman, Will Be Wild: Reading the January 6th Committee Report, Dissent (2023)

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