This week on “Playbook Deep Dive,” we sat down over Zoom with Steve
Schmidt, the architect of the late Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential
run, to hear what amounts to an untold chapter of that exhaustively
chronicled campaign. It’s a story about regret and disillusionment that
we are confident you will want to hear. 

Schmidt has long maintained that the roots of Trumpism, which he has
spent the last seven years fighting, can be found in the movement that
first gathered around Palin in 2008. But Schmidt has always been more
circumspect about McCain, his one time hero and the man who actually
picked Palin. 

Recently, though, he took to Substack to unfurl a surprising new chapter
about the legendary senator and his failed 2008 campaign, which we
discuss in depth on the show.