Carl Hoffman is a very brave man—and one hell of a reporter. In 2019, he set out on one of the most audacious reporting gigs ever: driving thousands of miles across the country attending President Trump’s MAGA rallies. He had no Trump supporters among his friends, and really didn’t know any of the president’s die-hard supporters personally. Why did they stick with him through every scandal, every outrage, and lie after lie after lie?

By embedding himself in the rallies—lining up outside huge arenas in the cold the night before the event to spend the night in a folding chair alongside the devoted rallygoers who fight for their spot at the very front of the line—he began to get a sense of who these people are, and why they idolize Trump. “They’re not freaks, they’re not foreign aliens, they are us, they are just like us in so many ways and they’re funny and they made me laugh.”

But, there is a dark side to the president’s supporters, both in their vilification of journalists and in their unquestioning belief in the most extreme conspiracy theories.

In our conversation, Hoffman talks about taking on this assignment—and about the people he blames for allowing the MAGA movement to take root in America.

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