Rating:
Dreadful—not the book but its subject. The author’s look into a staff bent on serving their master at the expense of reality belongs more to a description of fantasy than it does to modern politics.
It’s easy to see how the old president Trump had such charm. The methods, senseless rambling and other similar seemingly charming poos, and how these end up used by Trump, are described in detail throughout this book. The reader also gets an in-depth view into how the establishment GOP suffered through similar strong arm tactics that don’t leave anything on the table.
I was surprised that the book focusses only on the very short period between November 2019 and January 2020, but it’s perhaps even more surprising how many different avenues Trump’s team tried to use to get their way, all without any margin of success. And after each of these failures, the author brings up another troubled soul who is willing to sell some snake oil to the easiest person to convince—as long as you’re trying to convince them of something they already wanted.
The main value of this book primarily lies in expunging the last unfortunate ideas anyone may have had of the ultimate goodness of Trump, much like the previous titles in this trilogy. Does this have a relevance beyond 2024 or will this election season bring enough examples (that will be ignored) that there will be a new book in 2025? I wouldn’t be surprised…
