Acclaimed Author Rick Perlstein Shares Why He Refused to Go on Steve Bannon’s Podcast
This week on The New Abnormal, historian and author Rick Perlstein shares why he turned down an offer to go on the far-right firebrand’s infamous podcast.

Photo Illustration by Victoria Sunday/The Daily Beast/Getty Images
Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher (update links).
Historian and author Rick Perlstein is a prolific writer and one of the foremost chroniclers of the modern conservative movement—but when presented with the opportunity to speak on one of its most influential platforms, Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, he politely told them to take a hike.
“I’m perfectly happy to engage with people who disagree with me in a public forum, but not when the guy who controls the microphone admits to being a propagandist,” Perlstein said on this week’s episode of The New Abnormal.
“I compared it—it’d be like playing a basketball game where the other team gets the hoop to be at 5 feet and yours has to be 10.”
Plus! Author David Daley joins the program to discuss how right-wing control over the Supreme Court will shape Americans’ lives for the next generation—or more.
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“We have landed in a really bleak and dark place from which there is not going to be any return anytime soon,” Daley said. “I hate to be the bearer of dark news on the holidays, but I am the guest with the stocking full of coal.”
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Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher (update links).
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