I first met my new colleague Tina Nguyen this summer. I had read her phenomenal dispatches from the grassroots trenches of Trumpworld for Politico and Vanity Fair, but I’d never spoken to her in person. Nor had I heard her personal story, about how she had begun her career in journalism under the unlikely tutelage of Tucker Carlson, before finding a better mentor in our mutual friend David Frum. We met for coffee one hot D.C. morning and, three hours later, I was still listening, slack-jawed, to Tina’s stories about her travels among the conservative activists that traditional media still struggles to understand. It made sense that Tina, who describes herself as ideologically burned out, was so fluent in the language and culture of this universe: unlike most of the Washington reporters writing about the American right, she had lived it.

After Tina formally joined Puck this month, I decided to introduce her to readers. She is so smart, so funny, so searingly eloquent and insightful that I knew my readers would love her, too. It’s a long read, but I promise it’s worth it. I think you will find her stories and explanations about the conservative media-tech-political ecosystem as fascinating as I did.