Interview Highlights
On Bachmann's government benefits

Ryan Lizza

is the Washington correspondent for The New Yorker. He was previously a senior editor at The New Republic.



"For someone whose ideology is really defined by a strong dislike for government, if you look at the way she's supported herself over the years, it's mostly through the government. After law school, she works at the IRS, she's there for four years, then in 1992 she starts taking in foster children and does that from 1992-1998 and is paid by the state to do that. She then works briefly for a local charter school and then she starts running for office and becomes first an employee of the state of Minnesota and then a congresswoman, an employee of the federal government. ... Her husband is a psychologist [who] has two counseling clinics that like any other medical professional [clinic] takes lots of money from Medicare and Medicaid — and then on top of that, has received generous farm subsidies for a farm he owns in Wisconsin."

On Bachmann's selection of a Robert E. Lee biography by J. Steven Wilkins as a book recommendation during her state Senate campaign


"For a number of years, Michele Bachmann's personal website had a list of books she recommended people read. It was called 'Michelle's must-read list.' I was looking over the list and noticed this biography of Lee by Wilkins. [I had] never heard of Wilkins and started looking at who he was. And frankly couldn't believe that she was recommending this book."

"Wilkins has combined a Christian conservatism with neoconservative views and developed what is known as the theological war thesis. This is an idea that says the best way to understand the Civil War is to see it in religious terms, and [that] the South was an Orthodox Christian nation attacked by the godless North and that what was really lost after the Civil War was one of the pinnacles of Christian society. This insane view of the Civil War has been successfully injected into some of the Christian home-schooling movement curriculums with the help of [Wilkins]. My guess is this is how she encountered the guy at some point. ... She recommended this book on her website for a number of years. It is an objectively pro-slavery book and one of the most startling things I learned about her in this piece."