Tim Chapman on Principled Conservatism in the Trump Era

What does conservatism mean when personality politics starts replacing policy, principle, and coalition-building? 

Tim Chapman, president of Advancing American Freedom, joins Faithful Politics to explain how he thinks about the future of the conservative movement, the Republican Party, and the role of long-term policy advocacy in American public life.

Chapman brings more than two decades of experience in conservative politics, including work with Heritage Action, the Heritage Foundation, P2 Public Affairs, and several U.S. senators. The conversation covers Reagan-era tax reform, Jack Kemp’s persistence on policy, conservative fusionism, traditional values, free markets, strong national defense, and the challenge of building institutions that can survive beyond one political figure. Will, Josh, and Tim also discuss the One Big Beautiful Bill, civility in Congress, Iran, America First foreign policy, and what America 250 should mean for the next generation.

Relevant Links & Resources
Advancing American Freedom
URL: https://advancingamericanfreedom.com/

Guest Bio
Tim Chapman is the president of Advancing American Freedom, a public policy advocacy organization founded by former Vice President Mike Pence. He has spent more than two decades working in conservative policy and political advocacy, including service as a principal at P2 Public Affairs, executive director of Heritage Action, chief of staff at the Heritage Foundation, and as an adviser and staff member to Senators Jim DeMint, Don Nickles, and Tim Hutchinson. His work focuses on conservative coalition-building, public policy strategy, and helping shape the future direction of the conservative movement.

Support Sarah Stankorb’s work and preorder Damned If She Does: Why Women Quit Church and What It Means for the Future of Religion, Releases September 15, 2026.  Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9798889837091

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

And I think good government liberals and principled conservatives need to find a way to talk about how to recover civility in American politics. There's there is no reason that we cannot have a Congress full of, you know, Barney Franks and Jim Demants. Okay. So, you know, you said you had Jim Demant on here. Jim Demon is a firebrand conservative from South Carolina, as conservative as they come. But when you interacted with him, whether you were liberal or conservative, he's the most gentle, kind-spoken guy in the world, and he'll respect you in his in his interpersonal relationships. Barney Frank was similar, okay? You know, and but Barney Frank was a complete raging liberal, okay? The guy's like so out there on so many issues, but he believed in it. And he would go and he would fight for it, but he would have the conversation. Now, look, that may sound naive to say that that's something we should be working on to recover, but I believe it.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Hey, welcome back to Faithful Politics Podcast. I'm your political host, Will Wright, and I'm joined by your faithful host, Pastor Josh Bertram. How's it going, Josh? Doing great. Thanks, Will. And today, joining us is Tim Chapman. He's the president of Advancing American Freedom, a public policy advocacy organization founded by former vice president Mike Pence. Tim spent more than two decades working in the conservative movement, including senior roles with the Heritage Action, the Heritage Foundation, P2 Public Affairs, and as an advisor and staff member to several U.S. Senators, to include one of our former guests, Jim Dement. And we wanted to have Tim on today just to kind of help us better understand like what is the Conservative Party today and who is looking out for their best interest. So welcome to our podcast, Tim. Good to have you.

SPEAKER_02 1:40

Thanks, Will. Thanks, Josh. Great to be with you guys. Excited for the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Yeah. Me too. So so we always like to just learn a little bit more about our guests and kind of like what they, you know, kind of what makes them them. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact I'm a big Marvel fan, so origin stories are really important. So so I love like what what is it that makes Tim Chapman Tim Chapman? And what what made you want to like get into this world of conservative policy advocacy?

SPEAKER_02 2:09

Oh, well, I mean, I guess you can start with how I grew up. I grew up the oldest of six kids. My father was an episcopal priest. We were, we, we, we bounced all over the country, honestly, Ohio, Virginia, Louisiana, Pittsburgh. So we've been around going from parish to parish. When I say dad was an episcopal priest, it's important to kind of acknowledge what's gone on in the Episcopal Church, which was a big part of kind of my upbringing and my faith background. The Episcopal Church has been going through battles, many of which you probably discuss on the show, you know, and it's uh kind of the progressive left and the conservative right in the church, and they've got the irreconcilable differences, and then there were a big splinter within that church. And we we fell more on the conservative side of the line. And so left the Episcopal Church and affiliated with global Anglicanism, you know, over the past two decades. The funny, maybe maybe funny, I don't know. It creates good conversations at my family household. I'm a Catholic convert. So 13 years ago, I converted to the Catholic Church, and it was not too far a leap to Rome from the Anglican tradition. But that's been a great blessing on me and my family. So growing up in that environment, face was very important. I do remember, you know, it's funny, I remember getting an internship in high school, and I interned for an organization within the Episcopal Church called Noel, National Organization of Episcopalians for Life. So I got a little bit of like political taste there, not because Noel was really doing political things on the national level, but because Noel was making, was advancing pro-life arguments within the Episcopal Church. So I would go to general conventions in high school where people from all over the country would come and they had an upper body and a lower body and an executive branch, and you'd have to marshal your legislation through committees and things like that. I loved that. We got completely rolled on every single piece of legislation we tried to advance at those general conventions in those years. But I loved the fight and I got a little face for it there. And as I went through college, I moved into being more interested in politics and ended up here in Washington 25 years ago. But that's a little bit about my background, which can help kind of shape the way we think about this.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

I really appreciate hearing that information, getting getting a little bit of context. And, you know, when I when I think about political action, right, which is something that you've been involved in, obviously overseeing this organization, you're able to, you know, try try to affect things, right, that aren't just like it it needs to go from the idea level to the actual policy, some kind of implementations on the streets. And you know, when I think of political advocacy, normally the the ways that I interact with political advocacy advocacy in my daily life, well, for me, because I have a podcast, it it's unique because I talk to people who are political advocates all the time. So it goes a little deeper. But if you look at my dad or or my wife, she doesn't right talk to those people. She listens to the podcast, but most of the political advocacy she sees is people online commenting, telling people that they're terrible, this is a horrible idea, you know, or you know, whatever it might be. And of course, people have a lot of opinions. But what does it mean to move something from an idea to through this political system to an actual policy? Could you help us understand what that actually looks like and how does AAF fit into that ecosystem and fit into making that happen? What part do you guys play?

SPEAKER_02 6:03

Well, well, well, first, policymaking is a long drawn-out business. And and if you look at some of the, you know, some of the most important kind of modern iterations of policymaking, you know, that were really impactful in the country. You think about like, you know, President Reagan's first term and passing those tax reform bills and taking the top marginal rate from 70% down to like 30%. And but but Reagan didn't do all that work on his own. There were people that went way before Reagan, a decade before Reagan doing that work. So you think of like a Jack Kemp, a great Christian in politics and a fierce conservative, fierce free market supply cider. But Kemp was, you know, consistently in the 1970s introducing these blueprints for this piece of legislation and getting beat over and over and over again. And there were times when you read about Kemp where he was just tempted to give up. But he was such a relentless optimist, and he had such belief in the cause of freedom that he would continue to try to introduce the bill, work it through committee, build outside coalitions, build public support for it. But it took a long time and it was a decade of work, you know. And so, and but then you have the big breakthrough victory. And I think that is something, actually, Josh, that I'm gonna tie this back to what your wife sees online and that so many of us are seeing online. That is an art form that's lost in our contemporary politics today, and we're for the worse because of it. I think there's a there's right now in contemporary politics a need for immediate gratification. And you so so you see it like where it's manifesting itself today, kind of in the conservative space, is you know, conservatives said, forget Congress. We don't even need Congress. Let's just pass everything through the president's pen. Executive order this, executive order that, because Congress takes too long, and dealing with Congress is messy. Well, it is, but that's why it was designed. That's what it was designed to be. You have to build consensus. So we should want the legislative process to take some time, and we should want members of Congress to go home and have to make the arguments, and then to build the coalitions, and then to get other members of Congress elected who agree with that and build eventually majorities and work through that. But we're missing that piece a little bit today. We think about that a lot at AAF. I don't think that piece is missing permanently. I think it's a symptom of the political situation we're in today. But we think about that a lot, and we think about how do you reinvigorate Congress's role in this country? How do you reinvigorate broad coalitions for big pieces of legislation? I think that's important. And the reason it's important is because we have such a poisonous atmosphere right now where people will go online and they'll look at what's happening. Online is maybe, you know, 20% about legislation and then like 60 to 70% like dunking on political opponents, but like with some reference towards legislation or some policy objective or greater objective. But it's really not getting a lot of permanent things done. It's really just exacerbating the problem. And so the problem gets worse when we've got this pendulum that just keeps swinging back and forth. And so every four years, 50% of the country, you know, thinks that it's do or die for their candidate, and the other 50% think it's for their candidate. And and that is like an existential threat to half the country in terms of the way they think about politics every four years. And that's a bad environment to be in. But again, it's because we're looking for instant gratification and we're not doing the hard work of building political coalitions that can last and build permanent coalitions for the future. So that's something that we want to be able to fix. But my sense of it right now is that we actually are in a moment where people are starting to see the limits of this pendulum swing environment. We've had, you know, we we had President Obama, and we had eight years of Obama, and then we had, you know, four years of President Trump, which was which was a massive swing to the other side, and then a repudiation of Trump, which was a massive swing to the Biden era. And Biden, you know, I actually thought had an opportunity to potentially cool things down a little bit because he did sort of run as a moderate and a throwback to a more conventional period of politics. But he governed more as a progressive and he let some of the hardcore progressives push him into some things that he probably shouldn't have allowed them to push him into, which resulted in another pendulum swing. And I think we're in one of those rare moments in politics where it's actually a good thing for the country that people are so frustrated because people are going to be looking for some sort of different way. But that requires a lot of people. And people used to talk in the 90s about a third way, right? And in a third way, I think when people thought about a third way in the 1990s, they thought, really, that that means a really mushy, moderate liberal, not liberal, but mushy, moderate, kind of like, you know, conservative, some little liberal, some, but never taking a strong position. I actually think people want a strong position. I think they want people who will fight for principles and things that they really care about, but they want them to go about achieving those objectives in a more principled way, that it's more conducive to civic discourse, more convincing, conducive to national unity. And so I think we have an opportunity to begin to build a movement like that. And we're trying to do that through an organization that I'm privileged to be able to be president of here at AAF, but we're looking to build coalition partners all across the country to do that kind of work. So it's a it's they're they're big goals, but we're in a really, really important time for the future of the country. And it's either you pack it in and you just give into this zero-sum mandate of existential elections every four years, or you build something better.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

I I really love that that that explanation, Tim. And it and it kind of gets at the heart of my of my next question because you know, we we do live in this really weird period where we've got political parties, but I think that the political parties are somewhat disjointed in the sense that like nobody really kind of knows what the party stands for. Right. You know, so like as a as a Democrat, as a progressive, and I say progressive with a little bit of uh with a grain of salt, because I think progressives really hate when I call myself a progressive. Because we're not progressive enough. Yeah. But but but I'd love for you just to kind of help us understand, at least like what does the Republican Party stand for? I mean, maybe even more broadly, like what does it mean to be a conservative? Because I think people have different ideas, you know, like there's one one branch of the Republican Party that is all about loyalty and about sort of personality like Trump. And then there's there's other conservatives like, you know, I'll just use Josh as an example because we talk all the time, you know, like that that believes in a lot of the same things that like Reagan may have believed as a conservative. You know, so like help us understand, like what what what is conservatism today?

SPEAKER_02 13:01

Well, let me tell you the way I think about it. So I think conservatism and the Republican Party are different animals, but that they are that they are partners and at their best, they've they've been really good running partners together and accomplished good things for the country. When I think of the conservative movement, first of all, I think of a mindset or a disposition. And and I think the the central tenet of being a conservative is gratitude. And when I say that, what I mean is like gratitude for what you've been given by the people who came before you. And so you can think about that at a very basic level. Do you respect and love your parents? Do you respect and love your community, your siblings, the people around you? And are you grateful for it? And so if you have a great, a grateful disposition towards that, it produces a certain kind of person. I'm not saying liberals can't be grateful either, but I'm saying I think this is a core thing that I care about with conservatism. So one is that posture of gratitude. And then you go outside of your immediate realm, you know, of your daily life, and you think about am I grateful for the nation that I've been given? And if you are grateful for this nation, you are grateful for the founding principles of this nation. You recognize that this nation is in many ways exceptional and providential, and that there are some things about the way this nation came about and the way our founders, in particular, put it together that are worth preserving. So that gratitude, that first disposition of gratitude, then makes you want to preserve. And that's why you're called a conservative, because you are trying to conserve the best things that you've been given. Okay. So that's when I think of conservatism, that's that's what I think of. Now, when I think of the Republican Party, I think of a coalition that includes a lot of conservatives. Not all of them are conservative, but a lot are conservative. And I think a coalition that at its best has been a fusionist coalition. And when I say fusionist, I mean it's bringing together all sorts of different elements. And so it, you know, the fusionism that Ronald Reagan made popular, but really preceded Reagan through thinkers like Frank Meyer and then William F. Buckley, who popularized it and others. But that fusionism was one that brought three legs of a stool together. And one that one leg was traditional values, you know, and and and and basically a belief in the family, a belief in our civic structure, a belief in our communities that these things are important. The other leg of that stool was a belief in limited government and free markets. And the reason we believed in limited government and free markets is because we believe in the individual, okay? And so we think the individual needs to have space to operate within their spheres of influence, unfettered from unnecessary interference from the government. And then the third part of that stool has always been that we believe because America is an exceptional country, that it has a role on the world stage, that there's actually a role for a strong national defense to protect the American people, but also for America to be a valuable player on the world stage because it's such an exceptional nation. And that in in in modern Republican times, that's meant you stick with your allies, peace through strength, right? Walk softly but carry a big stick. Okay. That's the kind of that that's what Republicanism means to me. And I think that's still that basic three legs of the stool fusionism is still what most people who are Republicans would identify with. Now, look, the party's changing a lot. I grant you that. And President Trump has brought new people into the party. But there, and so there is a debate right now about the future of the Republican Party and what it will become. But I think that's the ideal for the Republican Party. And I still think that's a vast majority of the Republican Party. But right now, the party is really focused on a lot of noise. And I think that's problematic. And they're focused on political personalities and noise. And there are a lot of reasons for that that I'm happy to get into, but that's how I would define conservatism in the Republican Party.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

I I really appreciate that definition, actually. And I, you know, when I hear you say that aloud, it very much um resonates with my own sense of political uh political views, my my my political probably my ethos politically of what I would what I would think like again, understanding fusionism, this idea of like it takes virtue, right? Moral virtue is extremely important. Liberty and moral virtue can't be uh uh separated, right? They're five together inextricably tied. And I would love for you to, man, help me understand even more the fusionism, like two things in particular, the threat of license, right, that's in there, that's within fusionism and and even the other side of this danger of state control. Like, why is fusionism, I guess, so important for us to latch on to? Why, why should people who are out there listening to this, whether they're Democrat, Republican, considered progressive or conservative, and I know you're describing conservatism, but even make the case like, why should a progressive think this is important, this fusion here, and and think it's a good be supportive of it in principle?

SPEAKER_02 18:25

Well, in answering that, let me try to zoom out just a little bit on a concept that's related. So I think the fight, and and this is not my original thinking. This is um the this is I've I picked up from a a book called On Fraternity by a guy named Danny Krueger. He wrote this like 20 years ago. And he was actually a a British conservative. And but he did a great job of describing this, but I think it relates to your question, Josh. So his argument two decades ago was that look, for most of modern Western politics, in UK, the United States, et cetera, the debate has been between liberty and equality. And you can also think of like virtue in here in a in a certain respect, and I'll get to that in a minute, but it's been between liberty and equality. And the left has sort of championed equality, which is a good thing to champion, right? And the right has championed liberty. But Kruger put forward the idea that perhaps going forward, that won't be the debate anymore. It might not be a bipolar debate like that. It might be that everybody fights for something that he described as fraternity. How do you actually belong? Okay. Where do you belong? How do you belong? How are you knitted into your communities, your your families, your tribe, whatever it is. And that and that the task for the future conservatives was to make the argument that the most natural ally to fraternity was actually liberty. Okay. And this and this is where we get to virtue and whatnot. So and the reason, and I and I agree with that, I I think you see that today. So much of our debate is about people who are becoming increasingly atomized or increasingly tribalized, and like, and like where do they find authentic belonging? And the reason you argue that liberty is the more natural ally than equality. And when I think of this in modern terms, I I I think that the left sometimes oversteps, oversells equality, and what they end up selling is forced equality or like a flattening of system. And and Kruger's argument is the outcome is natural opportunity. Right. And so Kruger's argument would be no, the most natural and authentic way to actually achieve fraternity is that you have the freedom to voluntarily make those associations and those choices. Because if you're forced into those associations and choices, they're not as authentic and you don't own them. And so it becomes a much more authentic experience of fraternity when you have that liberty to do it. And so I think the fusionist right has always sort of gotten that right. They had not thought of it in those terms of liberty versus equality and liberty and then fraternity in the center. But the fusionist right to your to the beginning of your question, Josh, always did try to balance freedom with virtue. And balancing freedom with virtue is about that too. You can't really have real freedom without people who are virtuous enough to be able to enjoy it within the responsibilities that virtue puts on you. Okay. And if you just lose that virtue, to your point, it just does, it does become license. But I think those are the kinds of conversations conservatives really need to do a much better job at recovering their actual soul. And that is the soul of conservatism, I think. If you think back to like Edmund Burke, a great father of conservatism and the little platoons that he championed, and that those being the kernels of a great society, those little platoons, your little Associate your churches, your neighborhoods, your civic associations, et cetera. Those are what put together a real vibrant society where people don't fall through the cracks and where they do actually belong. Conservatives are at a place now where they have to recover that soul and start to think about what it actually means to be conservative. Too much of today's conservative politics is I'm a conservative because of MAGA, or I'm a conservative because I like President Trump, or I'm a conservative because I want to dunk on the left because they're crazy on DEI or whatever. And like I get all of it. I get the impulses. Okay. But like when you when your conservatism becomes identitarian and it becomes about people and political ideas more than it does about those undergirding principles, then you lose your soul. And then you and I think in that environment, eventually conservative conservatism gets wiped away.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

You know, we've uh we've spoken to a few people on on the show who have worked for Mike Pence, Olivia Troy being one. And I keep hearing that he's a really, really nice guy. He is.

SPEAKER_02 23:11

I just had lunch with him today. He's uh he's doing great.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

Like, like I I I two questions. One, like, have you ever heard him drop an F-bomb?

SPEAKER_02 23:21

Um never. I would if I ever did, I don't know what I think I would like turn into a statue or something like that. I I I look, I I shouldn't say this on a recording, but but he's the you know, he's he's the real deal. And I think that's sometimes why people have have trouble really not uh understanding him. He comes as advertised. And in today's political environment where people are not authentic, and you look at somebody and they and they may present, well, there's always a skeleton or something in the closet, right? Or there's always an axe that's being put on. And so it's hard for people to believe that that's the real deal. But I no, I've never heard of Mike Pence Fox. I I would be shocked if I did, but sorry to interrupt your your question, Will. But it's fine.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

It my second question would have been irrelevant if you had said yes, actually. But no, I'm I'm curious just about the mission of advancing American freedom. Like, so when Mike Pence created this organization and chose you to lead it, like what problem was AAF created to solve?

SPEAKER_02 24:31

So, Will, I I we all here think of it in two phases. So the first phase of founding AAF was right after the vice president left the administration and many of his team. I was not in the administration with them. I had spent 15 years at the Heritage Foundation. I'd worked for multiple senators, and and and and so I, you know, I I knew of them and I had followed Mike Pence from the beginning. I I remember when he came in as a backbencher, you know, congressman, and I was working at the Heritage Foundation, and I was immediately drawn to his brand of conservatism, and we did a lot of work together in those days. But they, you know, he left the administration, they founded AAF. And the way he describes it is he said, Look, I thought, I thought AAF was going to be, you know, another voice for conservatism, and that we had a role to defend the best things that we did during the Trump Pence years, and that we, you know, thought we'd just be another voice out there fighting for good, for good conservative cause. I came into their orbit and began to be have the have the blessing of being able to get to really know this team around 2023. And I was just as an outside advisor talking with them. And over the course of the year in 2023, all of us began to really see a problem that was growing rapidly on the right. And that problem, and and many of us are movement conservatives and been around organizations, wonderful institutions like Heritage and others. And but what we saw growing on the right was like this attraction towards that identitarian segment of, you know, the Republican Party, which is that I'm going to identify with this political personality. In this case, it was President Trump. And towards the end of 23-24, it was becoming very clear, it was clear to me that President Trump was going to win that election. And so the incentive structures on the right began to flip. And they began to flip in such a way as to say, like, let's retrofit all these institutions out here to make sure that we maintain our access and we maintain our influence with the new Trump administration. And so there were all sorts of projects being built up in the lead up to the 24 election that were designed to ensure that institutions would maintain access and would maintain influence. And maintaining access and influence are not necessarily bad things. They really aren't. I mean, you know, as a think tank or an advocacy organization, like you do need to be influential, right? You need to talk to people. But what we began to see was the way that a lot of organizations were retrofitting for the moment was to say, let's just adopt whatever policies come from Trump or his administration. And you saw little skirmishes like this along the way. I mean, one of them was at the Republican National Convention when they had a fight over the Republican platform. And they, for the first time in decades, changed the pro-life plank in the Republican platform and watered down the pro-life plank. And that was directly responsive to the president's preferred, you know, position on the abortion issue. And that to us was like that is a big glaring indicator. If a lot of organizations are going to go along with that, then what else are they going to go along with? And then you started to see institutions on the outside start to change their own policy positions. And so what I think for a super long answer to your question is we we want to carry that conservative flame that we talked about early on. We want to be able to help conservatives remember what it means to actually be a conservative, what those principles are that we care about, and then advance them in the public arena. But we think that there's been a space that's opened up on the right that, frankly, I didn't hope opened up on the right, because it's a bad sign for the health of the right that this space opened up, but it did. And so we think you need more conservative institutions growing into that space that say, hey, look, when the president is right on something, we're going to be there with him 100%. When he's wrong, we're going to call it out and we're going to say why we think it's wrong and what the better way to do it is. That's the best and highest use of the conservative movement. And remember, we talked, I think the movement's different than the party. Okay. The movement should stand on the outside of the party and call the party to higher principles. You're going to only win, you know, in a regular congressional year. You're going to win 55% of your arguments, you know, but that's still pulling the party in a positive direction. And even when you lose those arguments, there's value in the discussion. And so it's that whole concept of iron sharpening iron. The movement needs to be on the outside of the party, sharpening the party. And then the party needs to respond to the movement because sometimes those of us who are in the movement can fail to take real political considerations into account. And I understand that too. And so you have to temper the principle, the high-minded principle and that North Star with the actual on-the-ground political reality. And that's a really healthy ecosystem. But I think one of the things we saw was that ecosystem was breaking down. And we felt the need to take AAF and build it in such a way as to fill that hole on the right.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

I I really appreciate that mission. I think it's super important. And I would love to hear more on the idea of this rejection of personality politics, right? This is what we're talking about, like, hey, we're just doing this because Trump did it or Obama did it or whoever it is, this person that, you know, they're they're becoming the personality that we're going to moor ourselves to and attach ourselves to no matter what and how how much of a problem this is. And even leading into this unprincipled populism, like what is so wrong, like what is so bad about populism in in the I within conservatism? Why is populism in maybe in opposition to or in tension with principled conservatism? Because it feels like to me, like I was a Republican. I mean, I've voted Republican every single election except for one. Well, I did vote libertarian and presidential, but I've only voted for a Democrat once in my life. Voted for either libertarians or Republicans every other time. I voted for Trump and Pence, and and for the most part was satisfied with how with what happened, although, you know, whatever. I don't need to get into all that. But my question as I'm looking at this is it feels like it's just about Donald Trump. It just feels like whatever he wants, then the party just toes to that. They just follow and tow whatever he's want because they don't want to get primaried. They're, they're they're afraid that this is going to happen. And it seems like there's been almost a wholesale rejection of this in the Republican Party of personality of the opposition to personality politics and unprincipled populism. Yep. And I just love, I would love to hear more of your thoughts on that. Like, you know, agree, disagree, whatever it is, pushback. But how that's just my perspective. What do you think about that? And then and how how is AAF like recommending we we fix that issue, if indeed it is.

SPEAKER_02 32:02

Look, I think it's a uh well, first of all, fixing the issue is going to take a little time. And you need to be persistent and principled. And you know, not unlike the this is good, this is the sh I don't mean this to be the spirit, the spiritine, but not unlike how the monks saves Irish monks save civilization. Like you need incubators that take the the the truest and best things of the uh of what we believe, and they need to they need to survive, okay, and grow and me and and and and be that beacon. Now to your two kind of questions there, one on the personality issue. I you're right, Josh, that we're in a moment in Republican politics that's personality over policy, okay? You're absolutely right that that's where we are, and it's a problem for the party. Let me tell you why I think it's so short-sighted. I understand, I understand completely how much influence President Trump has within the Republican Party. And let's give credit where it's due, by the way. I mean, I do think President Trump in 2016 saw a moment that many political leaders on the right did not see. And President Trump in 2016, maybe not fully understood, but at least enough understood what was happening on the ground beneath him. And I'm talking about the decade that preceded President Trump. Okay, so you have to go, you have to zoom back, like even during the Bush years, okay, and you have to think about the frustration that conservatives had during those years. The conservatives had re Republican majorities in the House and the Senate. They had President Bush, who I still to this day respect and admire, but think there were some missteps there. But you had President Bush in the office, and yet you had Republicans failing to address the issues that voters were sending them to Washington to deal with. Think about things like entitlement reform and getting the federal debt and deficit under control. It was such a big issue during those years. And Republicans not only did not address it, but they actually created new entitlement programs. Okay. So you had that happening. That were not, were not, that it turned out were sold to us in a disingenuous way. Okay. And so that was frustrating for Republicans. And you had this buildup of Republican grassroots voters saying, I like, what are we going to do, guys? We keep sending you to Washington. We keep giving you majorities, and here we are. The debt deficits going higher. We're not fixing any of the problems that we thought you were sent there to fix. Okay, fine. Let's send this bull in a China shop there and just burn it all down. And I understand that mentality, okay? And so President Trump sort of was a vehicle for that. Okay. So I get why he's personally popular. And we're now sort of like the fumes of that movement, which really like it's its apogee was 2010 with the Tea Party movement, and then another one in 2016 with Trump, right? And so you had those two really big bumps. And but that that is dying down because some of the results are not being delivered even under Trump. Okay. So we're in a place where people, where he's running his credibility bank down because debt and deficits are not under control. The economy is not where it where we had hoped the economy would be. You know, whatever's what's going on with Iran right now, I don't think there's many people cheerleading in it anywhere, even on both sides of his aisle within his own party, because he's kind of gone back and forth too much. And so what I'm saying to you is his personality and the cachet of his personality is temporal. Okay. With it feels like it's forever because it's been 11 years or 10 years or whatever it is. So four years of Trump, four years of Trump in the wings as a shadow government. And then now we're heading into the next two, the two years, so we're at 10, and then we're gonna have two more. But after that, there is not a Donald Trump waiting in the wings that we see right now. And so everyone who's invested all their time and energy in President Trump being the symbol of conservatism or the symbol of republicanism is going to be in a tough place. That's a bad place to be. They also have to recognize that look, the president is tremendously popular within his own party, but he is historically unpopular across the country. Okay. So the brand is diminishing. And conservatives should not tie their brand to a personality. Conservatives should be tying their brand to the principles that they believe in that we've been talking about. And then finally, quickly, Josh, just to ask your other, your your other question about populism. I want to be clear that I don't think populism by in and of itself is necessarily a bad thing. I think Ronald Reagan was a populist, right? And I think you can think of Barry Goldwater was a populist. I mean, like that there, you can be a populist and you can be principled, but you've got to tether your populism to those principles and know what you actually believe in. And really what that means is you have to communicate. And you have to communicate in a way that people are passionate about what you're doing. And I think you probably also, as a conservative, if you want to be a successful principled conservative populist, need to learn some lessons from the Trump era. And let's be honest about Trump actually delivering real lessons for conservatives. We don't have to listen to everything the media says all the time. Okay. You don't have to be cowed by corporate America at all times and be afraid that corporate America is gonna, you know, duh gonna cancel you or whatever. Like there are real lessons from the Trump era. And conservatives, if they want to be principled populists going forward, should adopt some of those lessons, but should discard the like personality politics of all of this and make it about their movement.

SPEAKER_00 38:02

You know, um, can I can an organization like AEF work with, you know, liberals or Democrats on on issues that that are important to America? And if so, like like what are some of those issues? Two things come to mind.

SPEAKER_02 38:19

First, is not necessarily an issue, but it's an ambient culture, you know, that we live in. And I think good government liberals and principled conservatives need to find a way to talk about how to recover civility in American politics. There is there is no reason that we cannot have a Congress full of, you know, Barney Franks and Jim Demitz. Okay. So, you know, you said you had Jim Demet on here. Jim Demet is a firebrand conservative from South Carolina, as conservative as they come. But when you interacted with him, whether you were liberal or conservative, he's the most gentle, kind-spoken guy in the world, and he'll respect you in his in his interpersonal relationships. Barney Frank was similar, okay? You know, and but Barney Frank was a complete raging liberal, okay? The guy's like so out there on so many issues, but he believed in it, and he would go and he would fight for it, but he would have the conversations. Now, look, that may sound naive to say that that's something we should be working on to recover, but I do I believe it. And so I think that the civility issue, you know, genuine statesmen who will fight for the things they believe in, but will do so in a way that's respectful of others is really important because not doing it totally degrades the culture. And we get into the situation where Josh's wife can't look at X anymore, right? Because what's going on on Twitter is a disaster. And same with my life, right? So, so I would look there. And then on an actual issue, Will, like I would think the debt and deficit, like there are some liberals who are now beginning to realize we're six years away from Social Security being totally, totally bankrupt. Okay. This is the this is the program that the left has championed forever. And if you want to actually preserve that program, we need statesmen of both parties to come together and actually work on this together. And and I would I would welcome those kinds of interactions. And I think we're getting to a place where it's it's possible because the crisis is so near on the entitlement stuff. And it's also possible to have the discussions about civil discourse because people are seeing what the what the opposite brings us right now.

SPEAKER_01 40:40

Yeah, yeah, I definitely resonate with what you're saying. And I want to think through some of the major policy initiatives. And and even interestingly, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the one big beautiful bill act, right? This has been a controversial bill, but you've had positive things to say. I think even in the American Solutions Project, you guys helped in some sense pass that. Correct me if I'm wrong, but helped to work to pass that. So why, what, what was your motivation behind there? Why is it a good act? What's good about it? Is there anything not? Kind of give give us your thoughts on the one big, beautiful bill.

SPEAKER_02 41:17

We we were big supporters of that bill. It it it was a it was um an extension of the bill passed during 2017 during the Trump Pence administration, right? And so that bill had a timeline on it where it needed a renewal, and that renewal came up last year. We did everything we could, even leading up to the 2024 election. We we we raised three and a half million dollars and put it into a couple battleground states because we knew that the those states would deliver congressmen that would vote for this kind of legislation. And so we advocated for those ideas in those states. So we were advocates on the front end. Then when Congress came in last year, we were advocates on at the congressional level. So we were going all across Capitol Hill making the arguments for it. And then, you know, on the back end, we've been strong proponents of defending it as well. And look, why do you why did we push for this? I I mean, part of this gets back to like this is actually like where the rubber meets the mode road on this idea of liberty and on this idea of being able to actually engage in civil society. We want people to have more of their own money. We want people, we want businesses to be able to free, be free to be small businesses that grow into medium-sized businesses or large businesses that hire other people and that are able to hire other people and do so in a way that those people can then work their way up the ladder. Like all of this is important to us. There were other things in that bill that we thought were critical, not just that that the average American family got $2,100 back in tax relief. And I mean, that's a big deal. But there were other things in there. There's border security in there that we that we that we thought was really important. There was a deregulation component where we tried to unleash American energy. All of these things are helping the economy. We just put out a big study on this, which I'd be happy to share with you guys. But to the extent that the economy is hanging on right now, I uh we attribute all of that to the passage of the one big beautiful bill. There are things working against the one big beautiful bill. These across the board tariffs are not helping the situation at all. It's driving up too many prices. I understand the motivation for the tariffs. The motivation for the tariffs is hey, we want to protect manufacturing jobs or reshore jobs here in America. But the data we're looking at show that the tariffs have actually cost us 75,000 manufacturing jobs in the last year. And so to me, it's like that, and you know, I'm I'm moving a little off target here of your question, Josh, but that that's where you got to be calling balls and strikes, right? Because that, you know, if it's okay to want to do that. Kind of work to protect American manufacturing. But if you're actually seeing the data come back and it's showing the the opposite, it's time to abandon that kind of policy, right? And so, anyway, so the one big beautiful bill was a huge initiative for us. And so we're going to keep pounding the pavement on that. We just went over to Capitol Hill a couple of weeks ago and released what we called the one big beautiful booklet. It was 90 pages of a deep dive on every single provision within the the tax bill. And we gave it to members of Congress and their staff, and we said, look, you need to go home and you need to be able to run on something. And this is the thing that you need to be able to run on. Because let's be honest, guys, Congress hasn't done a lot else. Okay. But this was a substantial piece of legislation. And members need to be able to go home and defend their record. And I think the trick for them is getting it being able to go home and defend that record, but really sort of distance themselves from some of the other negative stuff that's going on in the economy. And that's going to be tough. And it's going to be hand-to-hand combat in individual districts across the country to see if that'll happen.

SPEAKER_00 45:00

Yeah. Yeah. I wanna I wanna switch to Iran. And at the at the time that we are recording this, it's been announced that you know war's over has been won. What what have you? We'll we'll let the audience figure out which one of them, like 39 times where we recorded this. But it seems like every single time there is an announcement that you know there's a ceasefire, the war is over, the terms of you know whether or not we win the war, one seem to shift a little bit, but then two, it seems like the the outcome is the same outcome that we had with the JCPOA. And I understand the JCPOA had issues, right? Yep. So so I'd love to just kind of get your thoughts like what what would a an ideal outcome be for the current situation we have over in Iran right now?

SPEAKER_02 45:53

I I I don't mean to be trite, Will, on this at all. I think an ideal outcome would be unconditional surrender. I I just once you make that decision to go in and you make that decision to put Americans' lives at risk, and you spend the hundreds of billions of dollars that we spent to go do that and degrade Iran the way that we did, which I my cards on the table, I was supportive of because I think Iran has been threatening this country for 47 years, and I think somebody has to do something about it. But once you make that decision, I think you have to see it through. And I'm pretty concerned about what I'm reading right now about this memorandum of understanding. Again, none of us have actually seen it. Maybe we'll see it tonight, maybe we'll see it tomorrow, maybe we'll see it in two weeks, but we haven't seen it. The Senate hasn't seen it. Our Isra Israel, our best ally in the region, has not seen it. So all we can do is take what we're, you know, hearing from drips and drafts from the administration and some leaks. To me, this looks like if if it's as reported, this looks like we backed down in a big way. And and look, I get the politics, okay? I guarantee you the president has seen polling memos that show that prices of get the price of gas and energy is through the roof and it's killing him politically. I get that. But that was entirely foreseeable, okay? Entirely foreseeable, and to not have a plan for that is almost inexcusable. And then, furthermore, to then say that we're going to cut this effort short because of a short-term political calculation. I get it. I get the politics. You want to win the midterms, but you cannot have an environment where you have something that looks like the JCPOA that if we look back, guys, on this six years from now, and somehow the Iranian regime has been able to lie and obfuscate and cheat the way they've been doing for 47 years for another six years, and they sort up and enriched enough uranium to create a bomb. This will be the greatest, greatest surrender in American history. I mean, honestly, it will be a complete disaster for the world. And so people need to push back on this. And look, I get it. Again, I'll say it one more time. I understand the politics of it. I understand how difficult it is. But we are a great nation with great wealth and great power. And we have the ability to address this right now. You can withstand a midterm election. If you need to withstand a midterm election, if it means that you stop this genocidal crazy regime in Iran from attaining a nuclear bomb. And that was the stated reason that we went in. And now it's like, it feels like what I'm seeing is this is buying Iran another 60 days to negotiate, which we know they'll parlay into another six months to negotiate, which could become another six years. I hope I'm I genuinely hope I'm wrong. If if I'm wrong about that, I will be the happiest person. And if they find a way to really get that nuclear dust out of there, and you don't end up with Iran controlling the straits, mentolling the entire global community on what comes through the straits, and you don't end up with Iran getting $300 billion in, you know, Qatari and Middle East funds, and you don't end up with them continuing to fund Hamas and all the other terrorist proxies they fund, and you don't end up with them getting a bomb. Okay, good. But let's see where we go. I I'm concerned.

SPEAKER_00 49:32

Me too.

SPEAKER_01 49:32

I don't think you're the only one. Yeah. I don't think you obviously you're not the only one concerned. And and just thinking about the um foreign policy of the current administration and kind of conservative foreign policy moving forward. What do you see as conservative foreign policy moving forward? Because it seems like we've had two things. It seems like we've had isolationism America first, cutting all these things. And then yet but I don't I I don't necessarily see our foreign policy as creating America as a safer place or because it feels like our allies, many of our allies are upset with us. And again, correct me from your your perspective, you know, we're somehow buddy up with Russia and with like China even. Yeah. And it's in and I guess I'm trying to understand where you guys are at. Where where do you where does AAF see foreign policy, where it should go, and how does that compare to what's happening right now?

SPEAKER_02 50:38

Well, I let me start by saying, and kind of like I said earlier, there are there are real lessons from the Trump era that principal conservatives need to digest and then to work through themselves. In foreign policy, the rise of the isolationist wing of the Republican Party, or sometimes called the America First Wing of the Republican Party, is in most part a response to failed efforts in previous Republican administr administrations in the Middle East. So we have to internalize that. Okay. Now I think it's grown into something far more dangerous. But I think that that was the kernel of truth that we need to figure out how to address that allowed the America First isolationist wing to gain such cachet. Okay. So and I think one of the one of the one of the lessons there is a little more restraint and modesty about what we can do in terms of potentially, you know, changing models of government overseas or how much we get involved overseas, a little restraint and modesty would be a good thing. But that does not mean that it's not in America's interest to project power wherever it can. And so when you think about foreign policy, you need to be about thinking about how do you project power? You can project power economically. You can project power with building strong allies, right? Or you can project power militarily or diplomatically. Okay. And so I do think America still needs to be projecting power, but we need to be smarter about it. You know, the Trump administration seems to get this sort of, but then never quite get it right. Like, think about we we talked a little bit about the tariffs earlier. Like they're trying to use tariffs as a leverage tool to project some power. And that makes sense when you're thinking about China. Okay. So we should probably do the cost-benefit analysis internally and say it is worth putting some high tariffs on China because one, we don't want them stealing our intellectual property anymore. Two, we don't want them taking all of our capacity to build our own things, especially critical things, like, you know, if we're talking about critical minerals or like protective personal equipment or like, you know, manufacturing drugs, like these are things that you would make an argument we need for a national security reason or for our own capacity reasons. So use things like economic statecraft, like tariffs on China, but don't blanket the entire world with those things. Because when you treat China the same way you treat Canada or the same way you treat the UK, then you create a disincentive problem, right? For your allies to actually work with you. And this is where we get into trouble. I mean, like, you know, it would be nice to have the Europeans on board with us as we're trying to sign whatever deal this is with Iran, but we're not because we've already tariffed them out of existence in terms of our relationship with them. And they don't have an incentive structure to come along with us. And the deal itself is kind of bad. But you see my point, which is like you want to build economic alliances with some countries. And it's okay to have that free flow of goods with some countries who are your allies. So I think conservative public policy needs to take your allies seriously, needs to project power with some discipline on it, needs to think strategically about who the biggest foes are right now, China being one of the biggest. So you need a long-term strategy for how to deal with China. And it can't just be a short-term, like go over there with all the tech, you know, lords in the United States and try to cut some deals. Like that's not where we're gonna get where we need to go with China. But I think we're a little bit of a ways away from that. But again, to my to lean back a little here on optimism, I think the America is learning a lot of lessons right now. We're learning the values of allies, right? We're learning that America does need to project power where it's important to project it, but do it smart. Okay. And like there's an opportunity coming, I think, in a post-Trump era to reevaluate, take the best of what Trump was able to teach us, the best of what we've always thought as conservatives, and build a new way to deal with foreign policy around those ideas.

SPEAKER_00 54:53

I love that. The uh gosh, I have so many more questions for you, but this is my last one. So uh America is turning 250 this year, hadn't looked better, you know, hadn't looked better before. Wait, what's what's the combo I'm trying to dig for? Haven't had a better looking day in her life. Okay, got it. Yeah, scratch. Yeah, but America's turning 250. And I I would love to just kind of just hear your thoughts about that. Like, what does it mean to you? Like, you know, what are what are you all doing? What's AAF doing? Because, you know, a semi-quincentennial doesn't happen every every day. So yeah, what uh what do you think?

SPEAKER_02 55:29

So one of the things we're releasing this month is a national index of of kind of we're calling it an index of freedom indicators, where we're basically looking across the country and we're looking at things like family health, economic health, community health, et cetera, and tying it to like to America's long-term uh capacity to have another 250 years like this. So that's one thing we're doing, and we're trying to, and we're also looking back at founding our principles and how that can inform how we build going forward. We'll be doing some events around the country. We're we are in early stages of a Boston event up there, which would be a great place to do something this fall. And we're having some speakers come in throughout the year to do to do some America 250 programming as well. But look, what it means to me is like 250 years is actually not a long time, right? And so we're still a baby nation. And I I think, you know, sometimes if I'm tempted to be pessimistic, you know, you can think we're a nation that's a great power that's run its course. And especially if you look around at our political environment today. But if you look back over our 250 years, we've had a lot of really rambunctious political environments, right? Like, think about like the Jacksonian Revolution or like think about, you know, you know, pre-New Deal and the economic recession and depression that impacted this country. Like there have been all sorts of ups and downs. And I hope that we can find a way to think of ourselves as kind of in a tumultuous period, but still having that American grit and determination and everything that made this country so great. I hope we can think about ourselves as being able to survive it and become even better after. I mean, look, that's part of what we're trying to do at AAF, essentially, is say, look, there are principles that we care about and they've always animated America. And if we are able to continue to just kind of talk to people about those, you trust in the American people that over time they will come to the right thing. And I and I still do. I mean, look, every time I go out there and talk to people, you don't see, you don't see the online environment when you're out there just talking to people. And so we want to continue to do more of that. But I think America 250 needs to be about how do we do it another 250 years, not that we are, you know, not this, you know, obnoxious meme about Rome falling nonstop, you know, like that. Not the there's too much doomerism right now. And I think we can do another 250. So that's what my hope is.

SPEAKER_01 57:59

Well, I uh I share that hope and I really appreciate you coming on, Tim, spending some time with us. How can people connect to Amer uh advancing American freedom and your cause and your mission? How can they connect to you and AAF and connect with what you guys are doing?

SPEAKER_02 58:16

Well, thank you for that. We're we're at advancingamericanfreedom.com, so feel free to look us up there. We are published all over the place these days and got a lot of great scholars doing wonderful work here who are leading in their fields. You can uh also find us on X at American Freedom. You can find me on X at Tim Chapman. But uh, I'm really grateful, Josh and Will, for your time and for what you guys do. So thanks.

SPEAKER_01 58:43

Yeah, absolutely. And uh the feeling is mutual. And to our listeners and viewers, guys, thanks for joining us for another episode of Faithful Politics Podcast. Make sure you're liking, subscribing, send this to someone who needs to hear it, would be interested in it, help us bring this mission and this purpose out even further beyond. Make sure you check out America 250 um and uh and and check out our our work there. And until next time, guys, keep your conversations not right or left, but up.