He Wrote Those Awful MAGA Emails You Hated. Until He Finally Broke Free. | Hello Merge Tag Ep. 46

Miles Bruner spent 12 years working in the Republican ecosystem, first as a grassroots organizer in Orange County, California, then as a digital fundraising strategist for one of the top GOP fundraising firms in the country. Recently, he went public with an article in The Bulwark detailing his decision to leave the Republican Party over its descent into authoritarianism and calling on his colleagues to do the same.

The piece, “My Last Day as an Accomplice of the Republican Party,” is powerful. Miles isn’t the first Republican to quit his party publicly; Tim Miller has written a whole book about his own journey. But I was particularly interested in talking to Miles because he worked in digital, inside a party he found himself agreeing with less and less.

To quote him briefly:

The clients I oversaw and the emails I wrote for them were all 100 percent pro-MAGA. Every piece of fundraising content had to somehow out-MAGA the previous. It was routine to publish content that pushed election fraud conspiracies, stoked anti-immigrant sentiment, and sowed distrust in our institutions.

As he spells out, he couldn’t afford to leave, but couldn’t bear to stay. Ultimately his values won the day and here we are. He joined me on the pod to talk about what he saw from the inside—and what he thinks is coming next.

We covered:

• What’s working on the right
• What he thinks is coming next
• The secret behind all those bible verses you see Republicans sharing on social
• Whether Google is actually preventing Republican emails from getting delivered? (Hint: it’s not!)
• Escaping the GOP cult
• And so much more!

Listen to the full episode right here, or wherever you stream podcasts.

Find all episodes at HelloMergeTag.com or wherever you stream podcasts.

Links

Miles’ article, titled My Last Day as an Accomplice of the Republican Party.

 

Big thanks to our sponsors:

Civic Shout. Learn more about the great work they’re doing to help Democratic campaigns and progressive nonprofits build their lists ethically at civicshout.com/partners.

 

Episode Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and has not been copy-edited. While it can serve as a helpful guide to our conversation, it may contain errors or omissions. For the most accurate representation, we recommend listening to (or watching) the full episode.

Josh Klemons: Miles Bruner spent 12 years working in the Republican ecosystem. First as a grassroots organizer in Orange County, California, then as a digital fundraising strategist for one of the top GOP fundraising firms in the country. Recently, he went public with an article in the Bullwark detailing his decision to leave the Republican party over its descent into author into authoritarianism and calling on his colleagues to do the same. The piece, My Last Day as an accomplice of the Republican Party, is powerful. I’ll link to it in the show notes. Miles isn’t the first Republican to quit his party publicly. Tim Miller has written a whole book about his own journey. But I was particularly interested in talking to Miles because he worked in digital inside a party he found himself agreeing with less and less. to quote to quote him briefly, “The clients I oversaw and the emails I wrote for them were all 100% pro MAGA. Every

Josh Klemons: piece of fundraising content had to somehow out MAGA the previous. It was routine to publish content that pushed election fraud conspiracies, stoked anti-immigrant sentiment, and so distrust in our institutions.” As he spells it out, he couldn’t afford to leave, but couldn’t bear to stay. And ultimately, his values won the day, and here we are. So, Miles, thank you so much for coming on the pod. Um, I gave a very brief summation, but I’d love for you to in your own words sort of sum up like how did we get here?
Miles Bruner: Yeah. Uh, thank you for that. I really appreciate it. Um, yeah, I had gotten my start uh in Republican politics all the way back into the Bush era. Um, I got my start there and I uh the the second one.
Josh Klemons: The first question or the second one. Okay, just check.
Miles Bruner: Um, yeah, I just had a birthday the other day, so um I’m getting older, but I’m not that old yet.
Josh Klemons: Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Klemons: You don’t seem old enough, but you know, you never know.
Miles Bruner: Um, but yeah, I got my start um just in high school um in the post 911 um atmosphere. Um what Bush was selling at the time was very appealing to a kid who saw everything in black and white terms. Um, and so from there I got my first real professional gig working out in California as you mentioned. Um, I worked for a moderate. Um, that’s one of the ways I was able to justify staying so long in the Republican party is I I worked as a grassroots organizer for someone who was a refugee uh from Vietnam um and talked very well about immigrants, the value of immigration uh and the um role of government as a welfare tool. So that that’s what kept me there for so long. Um, and then after the blue wave, as you know, I transitioned over to digital. Um, that’s where I was for five to six years.
Josh Klemons: Um, so yeah, let’s talk about digital fundraising on the right.

Josh Klemons: Um, I do follow digital fundraising across the board or digital in general.
Miles Bruner: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Um, but obviously, you know, I live on the left. Um, so yeah, how do you see like talk to me about like the broad overview of how you see um, email and SMS in particular, but digital fundraising in general on the right, like what’s working, what’s the current state of the situation for the Republican party.

Miles Bruner: Yeah. Uh right now I think the Republican party is in a situation of its own uh uh making going back to uh the earliest days of the Trump administration’s first the Trump’s first term. Um being that they have to one up the previous messaging that they sent out, meaning that um all they’re sending out to their fundraising lists on SMS and email is pure red meat content. Um, so the the furthest right you can think of when it comes to immigration, um, the role of the welfare state, everything like that. Um, trans rights. Um, so you start at this point where take immigration for example, they say we believe in immigration, but we want it to be legal. Now, we’re at a point where 10 years later, we’re at a point where they’re saying Somalians are garbage and we want all these people out of our country. Um, and so it’s almost like this doom loop that Republicans are stuck in. Um, and it’s affecting um the overall uh political situation we currently find ourselves in. Um, that being said, um, I think it’s also seriously harming their ability to fund raise because it’s severely limiting the number of people that they are able to reach.

Miles Bruner: Um, we’ve noticed that the pool has grown smaller and smaller with each subsequent election and the return on investment and the cost for acquiring new emails continues to skyrocket. Um, so you’re seeing a lot of campaigns on the right really starting to tighten their belts when it comes to email acquisition and really pull back when it comes to um, investing in building healthy email lists.
Josh Klemons: And what’s the vibe in the room like you know again like I don’t know I guess one question were you working directly with candidates or were you sort of like a behind-the-scenes Awesome.
Miles Bruner: Yep. Yeah, I worked directly with the candidates. Um, I was, um, I took point from the very start of them coming into camp um, coming into campaign solutions. They said, “We need a fundraising strategy. Um, and they had no assets, no email list, uh, to start from complete scratch, build up their campaign all the way through uh, to the election. Um, and so I was a point person who kind of guided them through that entire process.

Josh Klemons: And did the like did they recognize what do they know what is happening or are they like why isn’t this working and there’s like they’re frustrated that like the things they were doing three years ago aren’t working today or do people like understand that they have continued to close themselves off as you said to like a smaller and smaller pool of people with diminishing returns.
Miles Bruner: Yeah, it depends on who you talk to. Um, it depends on the client. Um, sometimes you will have uh a general consultant um that will understand the lay of the land. They’ll understand digital. They’ll understand um what it takes to invest in list building. Um and then you’ll have other people who are completely new or they’ve never done digital before. They’ve done grassroots stuff. They’ve done um policy. Um they worked on the hill. So, it’s a wide a wide um spectrum of who’s um paying attention and who gets it.
Josh Klemons: Okay. Yeah. And um so during the 2024 primary, I subbed to all the Republican presidential campaign email programs.

Josh Klemons: I did a lot of writing on that. Like I was on podcasts and talked about it. It was like I sort of accidentally found myself in like this content niche. But it was really interesting because like I read I read everybody’s emails. Like I like I am an email nerd.
Miles Bruner: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Um I read I love email.
Miles Bruner: Oh, yeah.
Josh Klemons: Like I love it as a medium. We’ve all destroyed it. like both sides of the party have destroyed email for everybody. Like no question about that. Um but the thing that struck me the most about subscribing to all of the emails was just how copy and paste so many Republican emails felt.
Miles Bruner: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: And I think Nikki Haley was like the one exception. And you know whether she had a path or not relevant. Like she obviously couldn’t make it happen, but like her emails had some freshness to it, but for the most part like they were so generic you could have removed the names from the top and not known who you

Miles Bruner: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: were talking about. And I think that is absolutely true on the left as well.
Miles Bruner: No. Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Like I want to be the first to say that a whole lot of Democrats are sending equally bad copy and paste emails, but we have some exceptions like AOC, Jeff Jackson, Federman back when he was like still a Dem or whatever you want to call him. But like is there anybody on the right in your opinion who’s approaching this differently or is it all is there like because Donald Trump is running one of the spamiest email programs in the history of politics?
Miles Bruner: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: I would argue. Um so I guess that’s my question to you. Is there anybody on the right that you think is like leading the way towards a brighter future or for me digital
Miles Bruner: Yeah, like I think the company I was working at, we were kind of pushing back against that tendency. Uh we understood it. Um we saw all those emails, we got it. We saw competitors like we had this one competitor.
Miles Bruner: Um, I joke with people, you always know it’s this one firm if you see it. If you see that they’re quoting Bible scripture, it’s like you’re getting John 3:16.
Josh Klemons: All right.
Miles Bruner: Uh, any candidate that’s coming from one specific firm. Um, so it’s we we definitely started um definitely believe that you need to have a more holistic approach when it came to um writing fundraising content. Um because when you well I’ll kind of go back when I first joined when I first started um there was you wanted to be very focused on capturing the tone, capturing the voice of your client. Um and that slowly evolved. I think I think it’s that devolved.
Josh Klemons: evolved. Evolved, right?
Miles Bruner: Yeah, devolved evolved depending on your perspective. But yeah, it slowly devolved because I think people were optimizing to what was working. Um and people saw that deadlines um donate or donate in your donation will be matched 15,000%.
Josh Klemons: Right. Right.
Miles Bruner: Um so I think part of it was that so many people were just racing to like racing towards this one.

Miles Bruner: They saw what was working were just racing towards that all at the same time. And so you lost individual tone, you lost the their unique voice. Um, so our company started recognizing that as early like going back to 2021. Um, and our focus was on writing good engaging content. Um, and not treating your email list as an ATM machine.
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Miles Bruner: Um, and so we started trying to invest in um like more labor time into um not just treating the donor file um treating the donor file almost like a persuasion list. Like you would we would send um newsletters, you would send press releases um to it. And that got a lot of push back um because campaigns saw that we were it racks up send costs. Um there’s a cost to sending that those additional emails that don’t have a specific donation with them.
Josh Klemons: Mhm. Right.
Miles Bruner: Um so it can be hard for clients to see the nearterm gain of sending out that that kind of content.
Josh Klemons: Um, so your client or not, is there is there a Republican elected official or campaign that you would look to or point to as somebody who’s like doing it right?

Josh Klemons: Or again, I’m not asking you to name your clients, but like, you know, is there one?
Miles Bruner: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Because I would put like, so obviously Jeff Jackson has changed a lot now that he’s a sitting attorney general. his emails feel very different, but I genuinely looked forward to getting his emails when he was in Congress.
Miles Bruner: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: You know, it’s like a fascinating worldview. And I think AOC still manages like I know she has a team that writes her emails, but they literally feel like she’s writing them.
Miles Bruner: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Kat Abigazle is doing a phenomenal program right now with her email program. Um she was actually on the pod and told us exactly who’s writing her emails, but like she’s involved in and it feels like her voice.
Miles Bruner: Mhm. Yeah.
Josh Klemons: I couldn’t and again I’m not as tapped into the Republican side as the Democrat side but I couldn’t name a single Republican where I’m like yes that is an in like just as like some a practitioner in the uh in the space that I’m like yes that is an interesting email program.
Miles Bruner: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Again Nikki Haley sort of had one but she’s not using it anymore and like even hers was just okay.
Miles Bruner: No. Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Um but it was like way better than everybody else in the field. So yeah, I’m just curious if you can like name somebody. If not that’s okay too. Like I think that’s interesting if you can’t, but I’d love to know if you’re like, “Yes, this one person is who I think is like doing it right.”
Miles Bruner: Be honest, not really. Um, it’s I I think a couple of the clients I had and I unfortunately don’t want to name names.
Josh Klemons: Yeah, sure.
Miles Bruner: Um, I think we were doing good to differentiate ourselves.
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Miles Bruner: Um, we were, um, but at the same time, you also had this issue inside the Republican party where everyone’s almost locked step behind one orthodoxy. There’s not really a whole lot of that really separates people when it comes to the issues. Um, they’re all saying pretty much the same thing as well.

Miles Bruner: So, there’s not a really a whole lot of wiggle room for a lot of these candidates. Um, unless you again wanted to start quoting Bible scripture.
Josh Klemons: Right. Which they do on social as well. I see it all the time.
Miles Bruner: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Uh like Scott Walker every third day, you know, there’s another Bible scripture out of context and just sitting there.
Miles Bruner: Scott Walker. Yeah. Marco Rubio. Winsome Sears.
Josh Klemons: Yep.
Miles Bruner: Um, yeah. And I can almost guarantee you they came from the same vendor.
Josh Klemons: Interesting. Um, so was talking about Donald Trump in an email still a top performing message for y’all in let’s say the 2024 2025 or that completely lost its potency.
Miles Bruner: Oh, that lost its potency a few years back. Um, we were noticing um go well going back to 2020. Um, even then it was kind of mixed the endorsement.
Josh Klemons: Did it Sure.
Miles Bruner: Um, but it still performed very well. So again, clients, candidates, they saw it working in 2020. So, they assumed it was going to just keep working all the way through 2025 or 2024. And um around 20 I mean 2022 after he lost the midterms, even before the midterms, um you would put in his endorsement on an email and it went it almost performed nothing.

Miles Bruner: It would perform worse than the regular emails.
Josh Klemons: Ah, interesting.
Miles Bruner: Um, so his endorsement on your file um, didn’t really do a whole lot and clients would be upset like like we got the endorsement like they would go all out. We want this roll out. We want this that. We tell them like we’ll do it but it’s going to have to temper your expectations because his endorsement doesn’t carry the same weight that it used to um with donors.
Josh Klemons: interesting.
Miles Bruner: So, uh, 2020 was okay.
Josh Klemons: And that’s been true since 2020. Got it.
Miles Bruner: Um, still not the greatest, weirdly enough. Um, but more so starting in like 2022. Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Um, so I mentioned earlier that I think Trump is running one of the spam email programs in the history of politics. Uh, so I I’m very upfront about that. I I wrote a blog post way back um when I was doing that like email tracking um comparing the Biden it was pre Biden dropping out with the um Trump email programs and like pros and cons of both.

Josh Klemons: And I try to be honest and objective because like again I’m a practitioner as well as a partisan.
Miles Bruner: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: And um on average, this was a couple years ago, this was a year ago, on average, Donald Joe Biden was sending 1.7 emails per day and Donald Trump was sending over 10. Um and he was using multiple senders
Miles Bruner: Heat.
Josh Klemons: to do it, which is super bad practice, but it’s because he was burning through URLs and like there was all kinds of issues with his program.
Miles Bruner: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: I guess I’m just curious like yeah, do you have anything to add to your thoughts on Donald Trump’s email program or like I could kind of that sums it up for you?
Miles Bruner: No, like Well, it also depends like I assume you were probably on multiple lists as well.
Josh Klemons: No, no. This was a single email with like a tracked email address so that I like I went through and like tracked.
Miles Bruner: Oh, yeah.
Josh Klemons: So I did like a my name plus their name and I was able to track just that one email and it was I mean I was getting numerous emails per day.

Josh Klemons: But also if you go into the political archive like the email political archive um on average they had them him tracked at over 10 emails per day which is unheard of like that I mean nobody’s doing that would
Miles Bruner: Love it. That sounds Yeah, that I’m not shocked. Uh, was that towards I I assume that was towards the end of the campaign because even our Yeah.
Josh Klemons: have been in like spring because it was before Biden dropped out so it would have been I’d have to check but probably in like the summer maybe so like not right at the end of the campaign.
Miles Bruner: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And that’s just that on that list like he would send it out to multiple lists and expect those lists to get it out as well and in the process burn out those lists as well. So that’s another issue that we saw um when it came to list rentals um because yeah lists stop performing like they did in 2020 uh because of that practice. And that was a practice that bled down into other candidates.

Miles Bruner: Like there was pressure on Senate candidates, even House candidates. Um, at least when you got close to a primary or the general election, you were sending out at least in the final month three emails a day. Um, three, four.
Josh Klemons: which is like a lot but like that’s not a you know like in the final month but if you’re doing that for six months or eight months oh I cannot imagine did it work like did the clients who
Miles Bruner: Yeah, we had some clients that wanted that um and expected that. No, no, it would it blew up their send costs um and yeah, they were burning through donations and their burn rate was unheard of.
Josh Klemons: okay yeah yeah like you nobody body nobody manages that on your side. Right. Right. Right. Which has been a big problem I think. Right. Like we’ve seen that like cycle after cycle we hear stories that the Republican party is spending tons of money on acquisition, but they’re essentially like spending money just they’re bringing money in just to spend money to bring more money in which the Democrat side the Democratic party has that problem too.

Miles Bruner: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: But like there was something when Rick Scott was head of, you know, like fundraising, you know, it was like 98% of their money was just going into fundraising, you know, it was like not a sustainable model obviously.
Miles Bruner: Yeah. Donor fees for some lists and I’m not giving away any company secrets um but this is industrywide.
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Miles Bruner: sometimes to run a list you were paying a 95 to 100 100% for a list rental.
Josh Klemons: Wow.
Miles Bruner: So you were breaking even on the hope that that email you were adding to your list would donate to you and you would only have to pay maybe a 10 to 15% uh fundraising fee on that.
Josh Klemons: So you were breaking even at at best or less. Got it.
Miles Bruner: Um yeah, if yeah, you were doing 95 to 100% 100% you’re losing money because of the credit card fees.
Josh Klemons: Right.
Miles Bruner: So, um, and even then it was on the hope that they would inevitably donate to your campaign at donate to you at some point during the, uh, election, uh, season.

Josh Klemons: Right. Um, so again, I’ve been very upfront about the fact that both parties have a problem with spam, like no question. And I think Act Blue was slow to act, but has now like started to take real moves to try to like fix their problems. But I will also give them credit. Like they made it, you know, they outlawed the idea of pre-check boxes for um op, you know, for additional optins.
Miles Bruner: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: whereas Win Red seems to have like tripled down like the more controversy about Win Red enabling spam, the more buttons they push that are pre-checked.
Miles Bruner: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: So, I guess I’m just curious like were you seem like an ethical person, it seems like you were like based on your article, you weren’t working with evil people, you know, like um were y’all telling your clients we
Miles Bruner: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: shouldn’t be doing this and they said no, do it or was this just like no, this is what we do. We pre-check the box that says they’re this is going to be a recurring donation.

Josh Klemons: we pre-check the box that says they’re going to pay an extra $100 at the end of the month even though this was a $5 donation that they thought was one time.
Miles Bruner: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Like what was the process that led to that happening at such scale? Because it really was like a pretty Republicanwide problem from my outside perspective.
Miles Bruner: Yeah. It was at least from our perspective it was something we actively discouraged um because we saw that if you did that your deliverability cratered um you would hurt your list abuse it in the long term.
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Miles Bruner: So it’s something we actively discouraged as a company um when it came to the practice. Um but you had the pressure on them from committees from um leadership uh to they get these notifications like has best practices from leadership to yeah communities it’s like this is something that we’re doing we recommend
Josh Klemons: leadership was telling them to do it.
Miles Bruner: you do it. Um, and so we’d get push back from them and so it was kind of like this tension um that existed.

Miles Bruner: Um, and some companies honestly just didn’t give a damn. like um and I could see why some companies didn’t care because for a lot of these clients, they’re probably going to wind up losing and so they’re trying to milk as much money out of them as they can
Josh Klemons: Yeah.
Miles Bruner: for the campaign. So, they essentially see these campaigns as cash cows um that they’ll just rack up all these costs um and eat into their net and the client will lose and that they’ll be done with it. or they win and then they have someone to string along for a little longer. Um, so essentially, yeah.
Josh Klemons: So it’s like no loss for them. Like either way it works out. Yeah.
Miles Bruner: And Oh, no.
Josh Klemons: So Oh yeah. Go ahead.
Miles Bruner: No. Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Well, so like on the Democratic side again, a lot of abuse, but there’s also been a pretty public push to push act blue to do better. There’s nothing like that on the Republican side, is there?

Josh Klemons: There’s nobody like you still in that world saying like, “Hey, win red, maybe we shouldn’t allow these pre-check boxes. Maybe
Miles Bruner: No. It’s there’s there’s not a concerted effort.
Josh Klemons: we should outlaw some of these best practices that are hurting like the overall ecosystem of our list.” Like, is there anybody left on the Republican side that can like be a credible voice for that or there’s they’re all in out there?
Miles Bruner: Um because I mean all these candidates are getting they’re seeing what’s happening at the top. They’re seeing Trump um enact a lot of these practices and he’s still raising money. So if it’s working for him, it’s going to work for us. And what a lot of these candidates don’t get is that they’re not Trump.
Josh Klemons: right?
Miles Bruner: So, um, yeah, I’m curious how long it will last.
Josh Klemons: Yeah. I think they’re starting to recognize that after Tennessee’s special election, which just happened when we’re record like I think there’s probably a lot of panic right now um on on that side of the aisle.

Josh Klemons: The panic Fair enough.
Miles Bruner: Yeah. Um because I I swear to God I I’ve seen the man’s political obituary written so many times and like I I’m not going to I’m not going to believe it until I actually see it.
Josh Klemons: Oh, sure.
Miles Bruner: Uh I I know there’s always this panic right after um a setback and they have this few weeks to a month where they fret and think, “Oh, we need to change our practices.”
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Miles Bruner: And then the rubber band snaps right back and they go back to doing what they had been doing um in immediate immediately prior to set event.
Josh Klemons: Um, okay. So, in the article, uh, you describe the GOP consultant world as friendly, professional, and even fun. Like, you talked about, you know, conventions and things like that while also producing extremely damaging digital content in American politics and actively working to make the world a worse place.
Miles Bruner: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: So, I’m not going to ask you to speak for anybody else. And maybe if you want to push back on my reading of your article, feel free, but like that was my takeaway.

Josh Klemons: Um, is this just a it’s hard to walk away from what you do for it’s hard to tell a person that what they do for a living isn’t legitimate, or is this just like is there such cognitive dissonance
Miles Bruner: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: that they can like know that like some of what they’re saying is b******* and ridiculous, but like this is what they do, you know? So this is what I do. I don’t know. I’m just curious like how like I know I have certainly said no to working with clients if I didn’t agree.
Miles Bruner: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: I don’t there’s always daylight. Like you never agree with anybody 100% of the time. But if there’s an issue that I am like vehemently opposed to, I just say no. Like I’m I’d rather not take the client.
Miles Bruner: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: So like I’m just curious how what’s the vibe? Like are these people that can just completely split these two sides of their brain and go be like young fun normal people during the in the evenings and then go write like terrible content in the days or is it seeped in?

Josh Klemons: Is this uh you know is is I guess I’m wondering if this is like a um um what’s the HB or the uh Apple TV show um whatever where they split their brain in half you know like how how much of it is like splitting versus what the hell is it called?
Miles Bruner: Oh yeah.
Josh Klemons: Um, but you know what I mean.
Miles Bruner: Oh god. Yeah. Now I can’t remember it. Um but yeah. Um, speaking from like personal experience is you get good at pretty much that uh compartmentalizing um like I get into the office and I see what’s working. I see the messaging um that’s working on the right. I see the metrics and like okay we’re going to be going with this message for um this client today. Could be on again election denial. It could be immigration, it could be a deadline, it could be anything. Um, and yeah, you draft that up, recommend it to the client, um, and get it out. And then once you’re done with all that, you kind of just shut that out and go on with the rest of your life.

Josh Klemons: Were y’all like rolling your eyes at this s*** or like putting in this like put in the slack like I can’t believe I got to write another f****** email about like election denialism or was it like no like
Miles Bruner: Yeah. Um, no, it it it varied.
Josh Klemons: I am a soldier in the war for the country and this is what the the war demands of Okay.
Miles Bruner: Um, and you kind of kept your especially in in like the larger group, you kept your personal politics very close to the vest. Um, you would see people roll their eyes. Um, but didn’t really talk a whole lot about it.
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Miles Bruner: Senior leadership was very different. um in senior senior meetings where we were meeting with a senior uh consultant. Um then you kind of saw a little more behind the scenes. Um we would something would happen and someone would let something slip. Uh they would say, “I can’t again like you said, I can’t believe we’re f****** doing this.” Um like right after the abortion um decision do stops um we saw um fundraising crater and we had someone um basically kind of have like a meltdown like well well no wonder we’re not raising any f****** money like

Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Miles Bruner: we’re having this decisions like this come out. Um so every now and then the mask would kind of slip. Um, but for the most part it wasn’t really talked about in the uh larger public areas.
Josh Klemons: Interesting.
Miles Bruner: Um, so I I don’t I I think that severance.
Josh Klemons: Severance. That that was the show and that’s it sounds like that’s what it was. Severance. Uh, so it was like, yeah, you could sort of just like break your brain in half and go out and have drinks at night and hang out with your normal friends and then go to work and do what
Miles Bruner: Yeah, pretty much. And I I think it was also out of fear, too.
Josh Klemons: you do.
Miles Bruner: Like you didn’t want to be seen as the person kind of rocking the boat. Um and so he kind of wanted to be the one seen as the one who was towing the party line. Um so it was a multitude of factors um that came into play.

Josh Klemons: Yeah.
Miles Bruner: Um so like like I said coming from my own personal experience like it was um I didn’t want to rock the boat. Um I didn’t believe in what I anything I was saying so I just kept quiet. I kept to myself. Um, so it was a lot of different things you do to kind of cope being in that in that reality.
Josh Klemons: Yeah, for sure. Um, what may maybe the answer is nothing, but what was working for for you, for your clients, or like that you know of in the industry? Like uh and again, I mean like it it’s hard on both sides right now.
Miles Bruner: Yeah, I know.
Josh Klemons: Like everything is harder. Everything is murkier. It’s harder to get through into inboxes. text messages are about to get imploded by Apple’s new uh spam, you know, text box and direct donate ads on Facebook are harder to get through than they used to be.
Miles Bruner: That’s Yeah.
Josh Klemons: So like uh but I am just curious again like you know as somebody who actively worked in this space in the Republican world like I’d love to know like what were what do you think was working andor like will be the next like what are we going to be seeing from the Republicans in the next year in your opinion?

Miles Bruner: Yeah. Um, I think going forward there’s going to have to be a fundamental shift in the way they view email lists. Um, like I said earlier, like they’re going to have to stop looking at their lists as just an ATM machine and treating it more holistically as part of the campaign and making people feel like they’re more invested in the day-to-day functions and um the messaging um of the campaign. So yeah, that’s like sending them newsletter content. um and be willing to spend the money on nonfundraising emails. Um so you’re keeping up that consistency but still treating them like a normal person.
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Miles Bruner: Um so I think that’s going to be where the direction goes. Um, and I think it’s also going to be telling to see what happens when Trump is out of the picture and not setting the tone for everyone else because like again, like I said earlier, he sets the tone for a lot of these Republican candidates who a lot of them are new and and have an expectation that if they act like him, they’re going to raise money and they get upset when that doesn’t happen.

Josh Klemons: Right.
Miles Bruner: Um, so I think once he’s gone, you’re going to see um that shift take place. Um, but until then, I don’t really think it’s going to happen. Um, yeah, because yeah, after I left, like I haven’t really seen much of a change.
Josh Klemons: So yeah, couple more years and then we’ll see if uh what the sea change looks like when he’s out of office.
Miles Bruner: Um, we were starting to, um, like I said, we were starting to implement that in, uh, for our clients and we were starting to see see it work. Like we were seeing stronger inboxing, we were seeing stronger engagement.
Josh Klemons: All
Miles Bruner: Um, so um, and for some of them, they were starting to see a positive return on investment um, where they hadn’t before. Um, and we also had to set the expectation like you’re not going to see 2020 ever again. That’s just never coming back.
Josh Klemons: right.
Miles Bruner: Um, and so making these clients realize that um, email fundraising isn’t going to raise you the $100,000 it did or millions of dollars that it did back in 2020. Um, instead treat camp cam uh, treat email as an another just another wing of the campa like an outreach tool of the campaign.

Josh Klemons: Mhm. Yeah. Um, Republicans are constantly freaking out that Google is suppressing their emails. Um, which I think is b*******. Like I but I see people that I like I respect again as far as practitioners even if I completely disagree with their politics. Like there are Republicans I follow who I think are like smart, engaged, interesting people and then they like say like but Google’s not letting us through it.
Miles Bruner: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: I’m like dude that is not what’s happening. So I guess I’m just curious like does your party actually think that or is that just a public facing way to like tell their clients like yeah we’re not getting through because of the the Google?
Miles Bruner: I Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Like there was literally a lawsuit, right? Like y’all have been very public that Google is hurting you. It seems like b******* to me, but I’d love to hear your take as somebody who like lived in it during the height of that like that battle.
Miles Bruner: Yeah. No. Um we were actually are again this is another reason why um I stayed so long is because I really like the people I work with.

Miles Bruner: they were very smart people and saw through a lot of b******* um in the industry. Um and that was one of them. Um we focused heavily on deliverability and making sure we were not spamming people in their inbox and we were actually um getting into um like the main inbox in Gmail. Um and we knew firsthand uh and we were willing to say it that that is not the case. um Gmail or Google was not um throttling Republican emails um because our Republican clients were having no problem with inboxing. Um that’s because we invested in it and we had professional a professional p a person that was solely focused on the technical side of deliverabilities uh making sure we had clean IP addresses um and everything was kosher on the back end.
Josh Klemons: Right.
Miles Bruner: Um, so and we were willing to go public. Um, and we think, um, part of, again, like you said, a part of that excuse, part of blaming Google is to mask, um, that whatever firms own shortcomings when it came to their email program.

Josh Klemons: All right.
Miles Bruner: Um, and coincidentally, these are also the same firms who um same firms that had the spamiest emails. And we’re like, well, no wonder your emails are getting throttled.
Josh Klemons: Right.
Miles Bruner: Your emails suck.
Josh Klemons: Yeah.
Miles Bruner: Like, I’m sorry.
Josh Klemons: You’re right.
Miles Bruner: zone.
Josh Klemons: Yeah. Okay. No, that’s that’s super helpful to know that y’all weren’t having the problem. like cuz they like to think of it as like a partywide problem. But if even one major firm wasn’t having the problem, then okay, then it’s not a partywide problem, you know?
Miles Bruner: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Like I’ve seen people say like, “Oh, I tested an act blue link versus a win red link and like one got through better.” It’s like, “Okay, but who sent it?” Like senders matter, you know, like health matters.
Miles Bruner: There’s Yeah, there’s so Yeah, there’s so many different factors that go into how an email is delivered into your inbox or like like um in your inbox or how a link works like it’s isolating it to that one

Josh Klemons: You know,
Miles Bruner: issue is just the height of absurdity. Um so yeah.
Josh Klemons: uh, what’s been the response from your community, both you leaving the party and more importantly like leaving it so publicly?
Miles Bruner: Um no luckily like at least from my perspective um at least on a personal level um most of my friends I kept out of politics.
Josh Klemons: Do all your friends hate you or you still like hanging out with healthy.
Miles Bruner: Again, this goes back into that um needing to have a a divide between my professional life and my um personal life.
Josh Klemons: Yeah. Yeah.
Miles Bruner: Um so, my personal life was really not all that impacted by it. Um but that being said, like I did have some good friends like the co-workers I worked with. Um I enjoyed working with them. Um they were very professional. Um they invested in my career development. Um and they gave me flexibility when I had a kid to take time off. Um so that was difficult. Um leaving them behind.

Miles Bruner: Um and no um they um they were very sympathetic.
Josh Klemons: Do they hate you or they’re neutral or you’re still tight?
Miles Bruner: Um they said like I’m sorry you feel this way. Um, and that’s why I kind of again I went out of my way to not target anyone personally in my article or talk ill of them anywhere else. Um, because No. Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Yeah, I didn’t see anything negative from you. Like the party but not the people for sure.
Miles Bruner: No. Yeah. Yeah. Um, like they were good, decent people, at least on a personal level to me, but they were part of a larger um corrupted system is the way I kind of view it.
Josh Klemons: Yeah. So, a through line of the article that I saw was that it like leaving wasn’t like a moment. It was years of staying one more day, right? So, like I guess like how do you explain staying so long to people who don’t understand the world you were coming from?
Miles Bruner: Yeah.

Josh Klemons: And what’s your message to folks in your party who are still staying trying to get through one more day knowing that what they’re doing is not making this country or the world a better place in your opinion?
Miles Bruner: Yeah. It’s it’s a lot of different things you kind of rationalize staying. Um, like I said, when I first started in Republican politics, I was very much a believer in the Republican message. That was 15, 12 years ago. Um, but over time, I slowly moderated. Um, even before Trump, like I became more pro-life. I started believing more in the welfare state.
Josh Klemons: Pro choice. Pro choice.
Miles Bruner: Um, yeah, pro-choice. Yeah, sorry. Um, I became pro-choice.
Josh Klemons: That’s okay.
Miles Bruner: Um, and that also came working in a Republican office that was in a Democratic district. I saw the stuff they struggled with um um economically, socially. Um, and then Trump hit in 2015, 2016, and then that kind of blow blew off the blinders like, oh, this is what was the Republican party really was um built on top of um and he just exposed it.

Miles Bruner: Um but then I stayed because again I young kid um had a saddled with thou tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt. Um so you’ll do anything to just keep your job at that point.
Josh Klemons: Yep.
Miles Bruner: Um and so um as I got older reasons shifted. Um it’s I want I need to start a family. I need to build an estake. Um, and I need to be able to pay rent. All that kind of stuff. Um, so you just kind of get comfortable and you get accustomed to your life, the lifestyle and you kind of put all your misgivings, your disagreements on the back burner, in the back of your head. Um, so there’ll be points, there’ll be stress points, um, where it’ll be really hard um, but you give time and you again you just forget about it. Um, the real challenge people always bring up to me is January 6th is like, you stayed through January 6. How could you do that?
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Miles Bruner: Um, and one very sympathetic to that.

Miles Bruner: I tell people I’m to criticize me, you have to get in line behind me. Um, but I tell Yeah.
Josh Klemons: which which comes through in the article. just if anybody’s hasn’t read it yet, like it’s very clear like you’re not trying to you’re you don’t see yourself as a hero for this.
Miles Bruner: Yeah. Um, no, definitely not.
Josh Klemons: Like you recognize the role you played and again part of why I wanted to talk to you is because yeah like you work in digital but also like you recognized you recognized in this wasn’t like one day you
Miles Bruner: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: woke up and you’re like what am I doing? You were like for years like what is happening to the party that I worked in and like you know your like I I would say like you mentioned that your views moderated but also your party became more and
Miles Bruner: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: more extreme.
Miles Bruner: Extreme.
Josh Klemons: I I mean I think that’s a fair assessment and certainly January 6 seems like it could have been a wakeup call but yeah you had a kid and or whatever you know like

Miles Bruner: Yeah. It was. Yeah, it wasn’t. It weirdly had the opposite effect. Um, in that I saw that Trump had gone into exile. He was going to be no longer be a major force in political life in the United States and I was like, okay. Um, I yeah, like for those for that little while like I like, okay, kind of washed our hands, we can kind of get back.
Josh Klemons: if that it were that it
Miles Bruner: I disagree with the party, but I don’t think it’s no longer this fundamental threat to democracy naively.
Josh Klemons: All right.
Miles Bruner: Um, and you kind of coast on that for a while. Um, and that lasted even through 2022, like after you lost, all his candidates lost in 2022. So again, you thought he was going to be a non-factor.
Josh Klemons: Yeah.
Miles Bruner: And so yeah, and now we’re here.
Josh Klemons: And here we are. Um, okay. Um, so what’s what’s next? What are you doing now? And do you want folks to keep in touch or are you just out there spreading the message and uh nothing to nothing to connect on?

Miles Bruner: Yeah. Um, yeah, currently I’m just kind of trolling around for my next landing spot. Um, I do I’m starting to write on my own. I’m kind of spreading.
Josh Klemons: Sub, right?
Miles Bruner: Yeah, I have my own Substack. Uh, you can find me on Substack.
Josh Klemons: How can folks find that? I I’ll link it in the show notes, but go ahead and tell folks how to find you.
Miles Bruner: Yeah, Substack. Miles Bruner. Um, so I’m doing a little bit more writing there. Um but yeah, other than that, um just kind of uh looking for how I can contribute and um get out to work um and just tell people um like what’s going on inside the Republican party and hoping we can get more people out.
Josh Klemons: You sound like somebody who escaped a cult and you’re trying to bring your friends along with you. So, uh, yeah.
Miles Bruner: It it very much it’s very comparative. Um, like I’m lucky. Like I had friends on the outside.

Miles Bruner: Like my um like I had to torch an entire uh professional network to get where I’m at right now. Um but I kept a lot of my friends. Um a lot of the people I know aren’t so lucky. Um like their their entire social life um is built inside the Republican um party that ecosystem.
Josh Klemons: like they just build a whole world inside that world.
Miles Bruner: um all their contacts with other firms, committees, all that.
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Miles Bruner: Um so I think in a way it was kind of easier for me. Um like there was the economic pressures that I had to plan for and deal with, but yeah, I didn’t have the personal fallout I think others would. Um and so I think it’s way more of a cult leaving cult for a lot of other people um as opposed to just myself.
Josh Klemons: All right. Well, I really appreciate I appreciate you coming on the pod and talking about it.
Miles Bruner: Nothing.
Josh Klemons: Like I said, I found your article very, you know, that piece very moving, um, powerful. Uh, it’ll be linked in the show notes if folks want to go check it out. Um, because I think, you know, um, we’re living in a two-party system, and one of those parties is what you described, you know, authoritarian and a cult.
Miles Bruner: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Um, and we all know that, but, like it’s interesting to hear from somebody who like both worked in it and escaped it, uh, and their point of view on how things go. So, yeah, I was excited to to reach out. I’m glad you said yes.
Miles Bruner: Oh, thank you. It’s been a real pleasure. I really appreciate it.
Josh Klemons: Yeah. Cool. Thanks so much. Cool.