Finish What We Started

The MAGA Movement's Ground War to End Democracy

By: Isaac Arnsdorf

Narrated by: Will Damron

Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's summary

The immersive, captivating untold story of the mass radicalization of the Republican Party in the aftermath of January 6, 2021, entrenching the political power of a radical right-wing fringe dedicated to dismantling democracy itself.

Inspired by Donald Trump’s election lies, a growing movement of grassroots activists mobilized around the country to pick up where the insurrection left off, laying the groundwork to succeed next time where Trump had failed to keep himself in power. But their own success in taking over and purging the Republican Party became their undoing as it drove away moderates and supplied the Democrats with a winning message in the 2022 midterms. Still, the MAGA Republicans proved uninterested in learning from that defeat, only becoming more extreme, divisive, and dead set on returning Trump to power.

Washington Post national political reporter Isaac Arnsdorf has spent years at the forefront of reporting on this growing movement. Drawing on extensive, exclusive on-the-ground reporting around the country, and deepened by historical context, Arnsdorf has produced the defining journalistic account of the origins, evolution and future of the MAGA movement. Combining critical and rigorous reporting with the intimacy and complexity of a novel, this book is unlike any other in the decade since Donald Trump convulsed and transformed American politics.

Finish What We Started tells the story of the ordinary Americans driving this change, who they are and where they came from, what motivates them, and what their movement means for the survival of American democracy.

©2023 Isaac Arnsdorf (P)2023 Little, Brown & Company

Critic reviews

“Finish What We Started is a bracing, deeply reported dispatch from the front lines of the MAGA movement—a movement that, as Isaac Arnsdorf convincingly shows here, is more radical and determined than ever as it gathers force for Trump’s campaign to reclaim the White House.”—Joshua Green, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Devil’s Bargain

"This book is extraordinary. By turning the lens away from the palace intrigues that crowd far too many Trump books, patiently earning the trust of his most devoted grassroots followers to document without adornment what they actually say and think instead, Isaac Arnsdorf has provided an invaluable service for future historians. But you can read it now. And you must. Your jaw will drop. Even mine did."—Rick Perlstein, author of Reaganland

“Isaac Arnsdorf ventures beyond the punditry of Washington, D.C and delivers a revealing, distinctive look at how our nation's democracy might be forever changed. Peppered with scoops and fresh insight, Finish What We Started manages to be both spritely and ominous, a closely-reported depiction of the reorientation of modern politics.”—Robert Samuels, New Yorker staff writer and Pulitzer-Prize winning co-author of His Name is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice

Mass Mental Illness

Listening to this book made me alternately angry or sad. These people are living in an alternative reality where all normal people are corrupt and they are fearless saving America from Marxism or globalism or some other kind of system they don’t even understand. There are some bright spots; I admire true conservatives who fight a losing battle against the MAGA tied overtaking the GOP. I am a liberal Democrat myself, but I admire those like her and Liz Cheney who side with country over party. It’s scary, because has at least an even chance to win back the White House over a guy that historians, including myself consider a pretty good president