With Trump out of the spotlight since the beginning of the year, I have been enjoying a pretty stress-free time reading the news. I originally gave him a lot of leeway in trying to be a president, but it seemed like after a couple of years he just focused on his own ego and doing what he thought his base would like. This book focuses only on the last (very eventful) year of his presidency.
The book is co-written by journalists from the Washington Post, and is really sort of a chronological timeline of disaster, told from a liberal point of view. I prefer my news without commentary or significant bias, so I don’t usually read sources like the Washington Post or Fox News. For the most part the book tells just the facts, which are damning enough. Still, I got a little uncomfortable with some sections that seemed to try to push the reader towards outrage when I am willing to bet they are already there.
It was good to have the whole story in one volume, with references and a consistent timeline, to remember how things went. I was surprised to discover that I had read about most of these events from other sources at the time they happened – I didn’t know I was so up to date. This book is very comprehensive, and I think it’ll be important to have this out and available to the public so we don’t forget just how bad it got.
Other than a lot of detail there isn’t much new here to people who stay up to date with political news, but it does really show what an ego-centric animal Trump was, and I guess with his background it could be expected. The epilogue of the book had an interview with him back at his Mar-a-Lago club, being treated like a king and having Republican politicians and Fox News stars coming to kiss his ring. I think he is comfortable in his self-made reality bubble, and hopefully that’s where he’ll remain.
I’m continuing to read Snow Child, and after that I’ll see what my next book will be.
