As Trump unleashes his id on the American people, Evan McMullin seeks to encourage civic engagement; point out the early signs of authoritarianism; and demonstrate that it is still O.K. to criticize our leaders.CreditILLUSTRATION BY BEN KIRCHNER; SOURCE PHOTOGRAPH BY RICK BOWMER / AP
Last year, on December 4th, the screenwriter Brian Koppelman posed a question to Evan McMullin, who, a month before, had received roughly half of one per cent of the vote in the Presidential race. Koppelman, who built up a large social-media following with daily Six-Second Screenwriting Lessons, describes himself as a liberal Democrat. What can the average American do, right now, in a real way, to resist the authoritarian moves that are about to commence? he asked McMullin on Twitter. McMullin spent most of his career in the C.I.A., followed by stints at Goldman Sachs and on Capitol Hill; when he announced his independent bid for the Presidency, last August, few people knew who he was. He responded to Koppelman with a list of ten tips, which included, Read and learn the Declaration of Independence, support journalists, artists, academics, clergy and others who speak truth, and never lose hope. Each item was retweeted thousands of times. The next day, a writer for Slate declared that McMullin had done more than almost any Democratic figure to organize opposition to Donald Trumps kleptocratic and Constitution-hostile tendencies.
After the election, as the vast majority of Republican lawmakers either celebrated Donald Trumps victory or kept quiet, many people who voted for Hillary Clinton felt a deep desire to forge anti-Trump ties across the traditional political divide. A handful of Never Trump conservative commentators continued to express concerns about the President-elect, but many of those writers had low standing with Democrats, given what theyd advocated in the past. McMullin seemed to offer himself as a bipartisan symbol of oppositionand he was saying all the right things. Trump has empowered the white nationalist movement in America, he tweeted. Mike Pence is his enabler in chief. And on Thanksgiving, Feeling grateful for artists and a free press this year. On December 6th, the actor and activist George Takei tweeted to his two million followers, We need strong voices from all political persuasions to help curb the excesses and dangers of Trump. Evan McMullin is one such voice.
McMullins critique of Trump began quietly, when he was serving as the chief policy director for the House Republican Conference, in 2015. Trump announced his candidacy that June, and right away, McMullin saw in Trump telltale signs of authoritarianism, he said. Attacks on the press. Probably even before that, attacks on Hispanics and African-Americans. Those two things really concerned me. He began writing posts against Trump on Facebook. He anonymously designed anti-Trump images, and paid to promote them on Facebook, targeting states where primaries were taking place. After Trump won the nomination, McMullin tried to persuade a congressman he knew to enter the race as an independent. (The Washington Post reported that it was Adam Kinzinger, of Illinois; McMullin declined to confirm that.) The congressman asked him if hed run himself, and pointed him to Better for America, a nonprofit organization that was trying to get an independent conservative on the ballot. McMullin spoke with the groups founder, Joel Searby, then consulted friends and family, as well as people he knew in the media. He prayed. At what he believes was the last possible momentthe deadlines for getting on state ballots had already begun to passhe quit his job, got on a train to New York, and announced that he was running for President of the United States.
The bid was so quixotic that a handful of observers, some suspicious of McMullins C.I.A. background, wondered if someone was pulling the strings. Who put him up? Sean Hannity asked on his radio show in late October. The Bush people? The Romney people? At the time Hannity was asking these questions, the polls had tightened in Utah, where McMullin, whos Mormon, had based his campaign, with an eye on the one, exceedingly unlikely path he had to the White House: If the race were close, and he prevailed in a single state, he might prevent Trump and Hillary Clinton from attaining an Electoral College majority. In that case, the House of Representatives would decide the next President, and, who knows, maybe they would settle on him.
He didnt finish higher than third in any state. But by then Trump had publicly complained about that guy in Utah, and when Trump went on his victory tour, in December, he blasted McMuffin repeatedly, boosting McMullins stature. For those who arent conspiracy-minded, this is the more plausible doubt to harbor about McMullin: that taking a stand was also a way of kickstarting his career. Frankly, I think thats a good question, he said, when I asked whether he was opportunistic. And it goes back to my belief that influential institutions should have constant scrutiny. Well, so should people who seek to lead us. McMullin tends to talk this way, with an almost unrelenting high-mindedness. He explained that the attention is simply a necessary vehicle for the work hes trying to do: to encourage civic engagement; point out the early signs of authoritarianism; and demonstrate, by example, that it is still O.K. to vociferously criticize, and even to mock, our leaders. Right now my platform is Twitter, McMullin told me at one point, with a small chuckle. (Thats going to change, he added.) I had asked about the pushback he got there after posting an anti-abortion message; he noted the difficulty of addressing, in a hundred and forty characters, more complicated kinds of policy, the sort that require compromise and extended discussion. Still, the medium is handy for proclaiming the grand principles of American democracy.
Last week, McMullin and his running mate from the campaign, Mindy Finn, launched Stand Up Republic, a 501(c)4 nonprofit. When we met, it was still in the planning stages. The goal, he said, would be to engage people in defense of democracy and our Constitution, which means engaging with Congress and their leaders to advance things or to stop things, or whatever. He said that they also want to promote truth and some democratic principles and you know, respect for the Constitution. I mean, broadly, I would think of it as digital media plus movement. Movement plus media. This week, they asked their followers to urge Congress to fight the executive order on immigration, which, McMullin said, is a Muslim ban.
When McMullin becomes more specific about policy, he sometimes loses people. That anti-abortion post, for instanceand a more recent one congratulating Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuchseemed to cost him a few followers on the left. He lost some fans on the right, meanwhile, when he praised Sally Yates for defying Trumps immigration order. So far, though, Stand Up Republic reflects his continued effort to somehow find common ground. As part of the launch, the group released two videos, one of which, a black-and-white ad that questions Trumps ties to Russia, first ran in New York and D.C.during Morning Joe, which Trump watches. The other video, which is running online, features a clip from John F. Kennedys 1961 Inaugural Address, in which he speaks of the survival and the success of liberty, and then a longer clip from a speech Ronald Reagan gave that same year, in which Reagan says that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. As we listen to this studiously bipartisan pairing, the camera cuts between a diverse group of Americans, seemingly scattered across the country. They look thoughtful, optimistic. The video ends with the simple words: Join Us.
McMullin hasnt gotten used to being recognized, though it has begun to happen more often. In the Agency we called ourselves gray men because were neither white nor black, we justwe blend, McMullin told me when we met for breakfast at a former bank lobby turned bakery in Manhattan. He wore jeans and a navy-blue sweater over an Oxford blue button-down, and drank sparkling water. He told me that he had experienced growing pains in becoming a public figure, but that he didnt want to go into too many details, because theyre just too personal. When I asked him, after wed been talking for a couple of hours, what he did for fun, he paused. Youre looking for color, like what do I like to do? He looked up and off to the side. Really, the biggest thing that I like to do is just spend time with friends and family, he said.
If McMullins lack of color was a handicap on the campaign trailWhen he talks about his personal story at rallies, it sounds mostly like a man quickly reciting his rsum, a reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune wrote in late Octoberit seems, in the early days of the Trump Administration, to be part of his appeal. As the President unleashes his id on the American people, McMullin is a kind of civic superego, a Constitution-minded Jiminy Cricket. Listening to him speak about responsibility and fundamental principles, it was not hard to conjure his years as a Boy Scout and, later, a Mormon missionary. I thought I also detected a trace of that Mormon upbringing, which I share, in his sense of vocation, of being called to things. McMullin grew up in a working-class family in Auburn, Washington, the oldest of four siblings. His father worked for Boeing and then a power company, while his mother sold bulk goods out of their garage. (She now oversees economic development efforts in Everett.) When McMullin was in third grade, she took him to Washington, D.C. We visited the monuments and the museums and that sort of thing, and it really made an impression on me, he said. And I sort of had this feeling, even as a third grader, which is bizarre, that something in my future was there for me, you know?
One night when McMullin was in junior high, his father rented the political thriller Three Days of the Condor, from 1975, which stars Robert Redford as a C.I.A. analyst and Faye Dunaway as the beautiful woman pulled into his effort to thwart a complicated plot hatched by rogue operatives. After watching the film, McMullin decided to read every book he could find about the C.I.A. After his sophomore year in high school, he called 411 and asked for Langley, Virginia. Once McMullin figured out that, as far as 411 is concerned, the C.I.A. is in McLean, he called again, and an operator connected him. Is this the C.I.A.? he recalls asking. Who are you calling for, sir? a mans voice replied. McMullin repeated, Is this the C.I.A.? The man said, Sir, who are you calling for? I thought, Oh, my goodness, this is the C.I.A., McMullin told me. He eventually reached someone in the agencys recruitment center. He told her he was studying martial arts, and asked if that would help. She told him to call back when he was older.
He called back two weeks later. This time he got a man who gave him his direct contact information, and the two stayed in touch for years (McMullin says that he never learned the mans real name.) McMullin served a two-year Mormon mission in Brazil, then went to Brigham Young University, in Utah, where he minored in Middle Eastern studies. He wrote a couple of papers about counterterrorism, and he had this sense that terrorism was going to be a big issue for the country, going forward, he said. Meanwhile, he was accepted into a C.I.A. program for college students; every other semester, he worked at Langley. I had to pinch myself. It was amazing what they allowed me to do and the kind of access they gave me. I mean, I was reading intercepts of all kinds of crazy things happening around the world.
During McMullins Presidential campaign, a volunteer made him a poster that he put up in his Salt Lake City headquarters, which read 007 for President. But McMullin does not generally describe his past career as glamorous. What got him excited watching Three Days of the Condor was seeing people committed to serving their country. The Redford character in that movie isnt James Bond; hes a low-level analyst who just happens to get caught up in something much bigger than himself. McMullin was at Langley on September 11, 2001. I asked what he was doing that morning. It wasnt anything flashy or C.I.A.-ish, he said. It was justcandidly, I was doing an Excel class.
Eventually, McMullin, who had studied Arabic for a year after college and then worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, in Jordan, served undercover in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. Its not like I was going up to the local terror leader and saying, Hey, Id like to join your terror cell, he said. It doesnt work that way. Instead, youre the spymaster, right? Youre recruiting and managing and directing a network of penetrations of terrorist groups and foreign governments, and youre managing those people.
In 2009, McMullin went to business school at Whartonbecause one of my biggest professional deficiencies is that I had not acquired many analytical skills, he explained. Later, while working at Goldman Sachs in San Francisco, he volunteered for the Romney-Ryan Presidential campaign. Like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, McMullin thinks that the federal government is too large; if he were President, he would seek to overturn Roe v. Wade, he said. He personally believes in traditional marriage, as he puts it, but he doesnt think the government should make that decision for people. His parents divorced about a decade ago, and his mother, whom he called one of the most amazing people I know on earth for a variety of reasons, is now married to a woman. Her partner, Michelle, is the kindest person youll ever meet, he said. When I asked if their relationship had informed his position on the issue, he said it hadnt. I know there are a lot of politicians whoyou know, they were opposed to gay marriage and then they find out their sons gay and so then all of a sudden theyre changing their views. He paused. You know what, Im not going to delegitimize or disrespect that. But I do think that there should be some principled view.
When I met McMullin, it was a few days before the Womens March, and an anti-abortion group had just been added and then removed from its list of partners. I was just so disappointed by that because to me that says, O.K., whoever made that decision does not understand the threat, he said. Really, theyre objecting to him on policy grounds. The priority, he believes, is to oppose Trumps authoritarianism, and to unite with others in doing so. He still marched, though. The defense of an entire gender is really critical, you know? he said, when I called him up the following weekend. He didnt love some of the crude stuff he saw, but the overriding message against misogyny he found powerful and important. A week later, he attended the March for Life. Sometimes the messaging is a little bit hyperbolic, he told me over the phone. But if youre going to wait around for a march or a protest in which youre going to agree with every single message thats on display, youre never going to participate. You just never will.
More here:
Evan McMullin Is Trying to Save Democracy - The New Yorker