'It was all a lie': Top GOP operative delivers 'a searing indictment' as he abandons the party he helped build

On the Monday edition of The Ezra Klein Show, host Ezra Klein speaks to Stuart Stevens, who was once one of the most influential operatives in GOP politics. Stevens was Mitt Romney’s top strategist in 2012, and served in key roles on both of George W. Bush’s presidential campaigns. He also worked on dozens of other congressional and gubernatorial campaigns.

But Stevens' outlook on his party changed after the GOP nominated Donald Trump and helped him surge to the presidency.

"Most dissidents from Trumpism take a familiar line: They didn’t leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left them. But for Stevens, Trump forced a more fundamental rethinking: The problem, he believes, is not that the GOP became something it wasn’t; it’s that many of those within it — including him — failed to see what it actually was," Klein writes. "In Stevens’s new book, It Was All a Lie, he delivers a searing indictment of the party he helped build, and his role in it."

Listen to Klein's full interview with Steven's over at Vox.