The Mad King
Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, the husband-and-wife
reporter team, have written a highly detailed chronicle of the four-year reign
of the mad king, Donald Trump. In reading the book we become day to day
witnesses of how some ostensibly smart people in the administration got caught
up in the vortex of the Trump Administration on its roller coaster of lies down
into the depths of hell. Instead of having the so-called adult supervision of
Trump’s early cabinet with such luminaries as Rex Tillerson and General James
Mattis, we ended up with a team of middle school rivals.
We see a totally unprepared Trump enter the White
House with a host of resentments that are readily manipulated by the likes of a
Steve Bannon and a Steven Miller. It begins with his inaugural address focusing
on “American carnage” in 2017 and ends with the insurrection on January 6th.
Along the way we witness Trump sucking up to Vladimir Putin at the Helsinki
summit.
Much of what is written we saw play out on television.
This is especially true of the Covid epidemic which was grossly mishandled by
Trump. Where Trump could have rightly taken credit for Operation Warp Speed
which in record time developed live saving vaccines against Covid, Trump
politicized the issue and thereby condemned thousands of vaccine-denying
Americans to death.
None of this is a pretty picture. Baker and Glasser
are short on Trump’s successes such as the 2017 tax cut, the booming economy of
2019, and the dramatic shift in our China policy. Where they are very good is
that they describe the tick-tock that brought the Abraham Accords into being
which established a settlement between Israel and several Arab states.
The book ends with the lead up to January 6th
where the authors, in my opinion, make a prima facie case that Trump is guilty
of seditious conspiracy. As soon as the election was over Trump and is clown
car of co-conspirators that include Rudy Giuliani, lawyer John Eastman, General
Michael Flynn, and former Overstock CEO John Bryan, go all out in trying to
overturn the election of Joe Biden with a web of lies and phony lawsuits. Thankfully,
there were a few people still around in the administration to thwart them.
First and foremost was the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Mark
Milley and the better late than never conversion of Attorney General William
Barr.
What Baker and Glasser leave unanswered is how this
congenital liar got into the White House in the first place, how Trump managed
to retain power through the end, and why do so many Americans still support
him. My question is it support for Trump or tribal hatred of the coastal elites
where Baker and Glasser are full members?
For the full Amazon URL see: The Mad King (amazon.com)
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