It’s not every day that a member of the liberal elite sits down with an influential MAGA populist stalwart and has a polite, informative, and fascinating conversation about U.S. history.
Biographer Sam Tanenhaus joined Steve Bannon on Monday for a wide-ranging interview on politics, the history of conservatism, and the anti-communist movement that grew in response to the Soviet Union.
At the top of the show, Bannon noted that Tanenhaus is a liberal, resides in a tony town in deep blue Connecticut, and works as the editor at The New York Times Review of Books. But Tanenhaus is also an astute chronicler of American conservatism, having written several books and biographies on the movement and two of its biggest figures from the 20th century: Whittaker Chambers and William F. Buckley, Jr. (Subscribe to MR. RIGHT, a free weekly newsletter about modern masculinity)
Bannon praised Tanenhaus’s work, calling his biographies of Chambers and WFB masterpieces, and describing how Tanenhaus’s 2009 book, The Death of Conservatism, shaped his own worldview.
BANNON: Whittaker Chambers exposed Alger Hiss as a full-on Soviet military intelligence spy climbing the State Department ladder. Chambers screamed it to anyone who’d listen: this guy’s not just a sympathizer, he’s an active agent. No one cared.
SAM TANENHAUS: Then 1946 hits.… pic.twitter.com/WauG28pLms
— Bannon’s WarRoom (@Bannons_WarRoom) December 1, 2025
Published in 1997, Tanenhaus’ biography captured Chambers’ amazing life, from his time as a card-carrying member of the Communist Party to becoming a brave and outspoken defector. Chambers not only helped expose the evils of communism in the Soviet Union, at a time when many liberal intellectuals in the Untied States defended Stalin’s regime, but he also famously testified against the State Department’s golden boy Alger Hiss, who worked as an agent for the Soviets.
Tanenhaus’ new book released in June, Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America
Washington, UNITED STATES: US President George W. Bush (R) speaks during a tribute to National Review Magazine and William F. Buckley Jr. (L) on the White House compound 06 October, 2005 in Washington, DC. The National Review is a conservative magazine founded by Buckley in 1954. (Photo: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
Later in the interview, Tanenhaus was discussing Chambers’s incredible intellect, his background in linguistics, and how Chambers was able to read Dante’s Inferno in Italian. This impressive feat drew Tanenhaus to Chambers and his memoir, Witness, when he was very young.
“I grew up in a household that was your classic kind of aspiring, assimilated, second-generation Jewish American. My father was a college professor, a political scientist; he was the one who had me read Witness when I was 14 years old. He said, ‘You have to read this. This is the greatest book on anti-communism by an ex-communist,’” Tanenhaus recalled. “My father was a totally classic liberal.”
Bannon also asked him if he ever got “grief” when he published the book on Chambers.
“Yeah, actually, less than I thought I would, but I got plenty of it,” Tanenhaus said. “Some writers who are friends of mine now really came after me when that book came out. Who was I to tell this story, and make Chambers seem like a sympathetic guy?”
He also argued that classic progressive liberals, who were anti-communist but still defended the American system of government and believed that capitalism could be reformed, are extinct.
“That kind of liberal is gone now,” Tanenhaus said.
The full interview is, and I cannot stress this enough, fascinating. Although I have only read Tanenhaus’s biography of Chambers and Chambers’s own memoir, I now have my eyes set on the Buckley book and The Death of Conservatism.
It’s also great to see two people from different sides of the political spectrum have a long, in-depth conversation that doesn’t devolve into a screaming match or some back-and-forth debate. We need more of that in today’s world, as both sides have much to learn from each other.
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