The instant #1 bestseller.“This taut and terrifying book is among the most closely observed accounts of Donald J. Trump’s shambolic tenure in office to date.” – Dwight Garner, The New York TimesWashington Post national investigative reporter Carol Leonnig and White House bureau chief Philip Rucker, both Pulitzer Prize winners, provide the definitive insider narrative of Donald Trump’s presidency narrative of Donald Trump’s presidency
“I alone can fix it.” So proclaimed Donald J. Trump on July 21, 2016, accepting the Republican presidential nomination and promising to restore what he described as a fallen nation. Yet as he undertook the actual work of the commander in chief, it became nearly impossible to see beyond the daily chaos of scandal, investigation, and constant bluster. In fact, there were patterns to his behavior and that of his associates. The universal value of the Trump administration was loyalty—not to the country, but to the president himself—and Trump’s North Star was always the perpetuation of his own power.
With deep and unmatched sources throughout Washington, D.C., Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker reveal the forty-fifth president up close. Here, for the first time, certain officials who felt honor-bound not to divulge what they witnessed in positions of trust tell the truth for the benefit of history.
A peerless and gripping narrative, A Very Stable Genius not only reveals President Trump at his most unvarnished but shows how he tested the strength of America’s democracy and its common heart as a nation.
more
Should be read by every citizen who cares for the U.S. and
the Constitution
Very interesting, very insightful, very scary. Most of the book can be summed up by what one official wrote near the end of the book…”There’s a new ethos: This is a presidency of one,” and also added “It’s Trump unleashed, unchained, unhinged.” Read this for yourself and come to your own conclusions, but it will be hard to look past what many in the administration had to say about their leader at the time.
Amazingly detailed research, all woven together into a compelling portrayal of Mr. Trump. Superb writing.
This book gives a definitive, fact driven, picture of the machinations of the Trump administration concisely and clearly. Whatever social media, other outlets, and the news might have mentioned, this is what we have experienced for the past 4 years. It is a more than adequate explanation of where we are and how we got there.
Part of the essential reading for the horror show of the last four years. Reasonable flow, although not much more revealed beyond what was released in the press. The anecdotes are often shared and corroborated by many others.
Hard to read. But important to understand just how depraved the man is.
Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig both Pulitzer Prize winners open the door to the circus of the present administration .The writers tell us millions of Americans humiliated by a global economy that sped ahead of their skills and consigned their children to be the first American generation to fare less well then their parents envisioned a new world Trump would make America great again.The authors write Trump often reminded his critics ,he has been a president like no other. He has challenged the rule of law and jolted foreign alliances,disregarding seventy years of relations with other democracies while encouraging dictators and despots .He questioned the nations very identity as a diverse haven for people of all races and creeds by not silencing the white supremacists and bigots among his followers and occasionally by employing racist rhetoric of his own .Is this what the founding fathers had in mind?
I’ve made my way through several insider reports from the current White House, and for a while didn’t feel like this new book offered much in new insights. All that changed as these two writers describe in excruciating detail a Pentagon military briefing at what the generals call “The Tank.” The meeting disintegrated into a bizarre shouting match with the new Commander-in-Chief calling all his generals losers, dopes, and babies.
The reporting by this WAPO team is solid and often with breathtaking first-hand accounts, as key players made the decision to reveal the inner workings of Washington. Rucker and Leannig were often able to get surprisingly candid confessionals from people very close to the President, including verbatim conversations and even the thought processes of his advisors.
Much of this story is heartbreaking to digest, but it’s a fascinating outlier in our nation’s still unfolding story
If you listen to the news – all the news, not just Fox news – you can’t help but question some of the antics of our POTUS. Still, after reading this book and learning about the behind-the-scene-shenanigans being carried out by our politicians in the White House, I believe this book is scarier than any Stephen King novel I’ve read to date. Congrats to Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig (both Pulitzer prize winners) for laying this out in clear and irrefutable terms. DJT is not fit to be running our country, and yet he has survived a two-year FBI probe into collusion with a foreign power, proven obstruction of the investigation, and impeachment for blatantly using his office for political gain. What else is our republican party going to allow him to get away with? As quoted in the book by William A. Galston, “We haven’t seen anything like this in my lifetime. He (Trump) appears to be daring the rest of the political system to stop him—and if it doesn’t, he’ll go further. What we’re discovering is that the Constitution is not a mechanism that runs by itself. Ultimately, we are a government of men and not law. The law has no force without people who are willing to enforce it.” Where are our enforcers, and where is this going to end?
This is a fascinating look behind the curtain of the Trump whitehouse as seen through the eyes of two reporters from the Washington Post. Reading this book and watching the present responses to Covid- 19 makes this reviewer see things completely different. When this book came out, the interviews piqued my curiosity enough to borrow a type of book I normally “avoid like the plague” because of the partisan nature of them.
This was an eye-opening read.