Go read more about The American Spectator’s founder here. A tidbit:
Tyrrell is a charismatic, spry, and unaccountably handsome 73-year-old whose mainstream political influence peaked during Ronald Reagan’s first term.
****
Tyrrell’s Spectator was a hipster National Review, his generation’s Jacobin: It was where you’d read everyone from George Will to Bill Kristol back when nobody had heard of either. Tyrrell says he introduced the two. He has a gracious manner and a scabrous prose style that is the only thing about him that reminds you of Donald Trump: He just always goes there.
****
But Tyrrell was ready for 2016 most of all because Tyrrell’s career has been defined by the Clintons. His magazine broke one of the biggest stories of the 1990s, the allegations that Arkansas state troopers had arranged liaisons for Gov. Bill Clinton.
****
Tyrrell placed his bet on Trump way back in 2013, after Trump spoke at the Spectator’s annual Robert L. Bartley Gala. Trump was there to receive the T. Boone Pickens Award for Entrepreneurship.
“He was not the main speaker that night. You know who the main speaker was? Cruz,” Tyrrell laughed. “Cruz.”
Trump’s speech could have been given yesterday: warnings that America is being “scoffed at by the world” and incredulous mockery of Obamacare. Also, the familiar tics: praise for the old Reagan hand Jeffrey Lord, who introduced him, who wrote some articles that were “so nice” Trump had called him; a shout-out to the guy from the New York Post; stories about Ed Koch.
Tyrrell found him charming and witty. And while most of the small-government warriors scoffed, he found him conservative.
“I looked at Donald and I didn’t see an enemy,” he recalled. “When I look at Hillary Clinton, I duck. I mean — where’s the grenade going to come from? She actually tried to put me in jail. She and her lovely husband.
“I thought Donald Trump was a part of America,” Tyrrell continued. “You can’t imagine a guy like that coming out of France. I can’t even picture him as coming out of Great Britain. He’s really a part of America.”