Below you will find an edited and condensed transcript of our conversation, but my advice to you is to listen to our conversation, not only for its rapid fire qualities (if that is, indeed, your thing) but because we chose not to capture in this transcript my back-and-forth with Jonah on the identities and characteristics of our all-time favorite Goldbergs.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Let’s talk about your life as a homeless conservative. Trace the arc from the moment you realized that these folks who say that they are conservatives are not actually conservatives. And then talk about the first time it became uncomfortable for you.

Jonah Goldberg: I’m not ideologically homeless. The problem is I’m politically homeless. What we’ve seen in the last couple of years is the Republican Party get either dragged along or leap ahead into essentially a cult of personality. A cult of personality is somewhat misleading because it’s only a handful of people who really think that Comrade Trump will deliver the greatest wheat harvest the Urals have ever seen. But for most of them, it’s more like—and I don’t mean to be glib about this. My brother was an addict. He died a few years ago. And I watched how my parents would try to rationalize his behavior. Every time my brother had a good day, it was the first day of the rest of his life.

Jeffrey: “This is the day he became president.”

Jonah: Yeah. This is the thing with Trump. It’s constantly, “This is the day he became president. This is the pivot. He’s off on the right foot. He can change.”

Jeffrey: So there are two camps. There’s a camp of actual true believers. And then there’s a larger camp to say, “No, it’s not as bad as you think.”

Jonah: I mean, so, it’s funny. A year and a half ago, at Fox and other places on the right, I remember being so unbelievably disheartened by how many pundits and commentators—not just at Fox, but talk radio, all over the place—lied. They would say, “Trump is fantastic. Trump is awesome. Trump is a genius. He’s a businessman.” All this stuff. And then the camera goes off, and the microphone goes off, and then they would say, “I can’t believe I have to defend this guy.”

Jeffrey: That’s terrible.

Jonah: It’s horrible.

Jeffrey: By the way, that’s the swamp.

Jonah: It’s totally the swamp. And what I’ve found though, a year later, you now find people who aren’t lying. Now, you don’t find a lot of people saying, when the camera goes off, “I can’t believe I have to defend this guy.” They believe their own bullshit.

Jeffrey: The Republican Party that you thought you belonged to—it wasn’t the Republican Party. Donald Trump’s not actually a Republican. The base turns out to be populist and racist, much of it. Did it happen in a flash?

Jonah: No. I wrote over a year and a half ago comparing the slow takeover of the right by the Trumpists as akin to Invasion of the Body Snatchers. All of a sudden, you see a close friend of yours talking about Comrade Trump, and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, they got you!” It happened, one by one, with lots of people, lots of friends of mine.