Drawing A Line From McCarthyism To January 6th

David Corn is a veteran reporter at Mother Jones Magazine who has watched the evolution of politics in Washington for decades. In a new book he argues the extremism that led to January 6th goes back at least 70 years to Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his high profile hunt for alleged Communists inside the State Department, the White House, the Treasury, and even the US Army.

Corn outlines a series of deliberate choices by the Republican Party between the 1950s and today that he says nurtured and exploited fear and loathing, and capitalized on misinformation and political paranoia until it became a central tenet of the party. He joins Diane on On My Mind to discuss “American Psychosis.”