Landslide

August 2, 2021
Efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results were more of a chaotic “shit show” than a coordinated “Big Lie,” according to this colorful if myopic account of the months leading up to Donald Trump’s exit from the White House. In his third book about the Trump presidency (after Fire and Fury and Siege), journalist Wolff paints a scathing portrait of campaign staffers too fearful of Trump’s ire to deliver actual poll results, a conspiracy-minded president wavering between overconfidence and deep suspicions that Democrats were rigging the election against him, and a motley collection of congressional “Dead Enders” (Mo Brooks, Jim Jordan) and oft-inebriated supporting players (Rudy Giuliani, Jeanine Pirro) willing to undermine democracy for a turn in the spotlight. Wolff traces the idea that Vice President Mike Pence could reject the election results and certify Trump as the winner to conservative constitutional lawyer John Eastman, who dismissed his own theory as “not likely,” and depicts a one-on-one meeting, on the eve of the January 6 Capitol riot, where Trump pushed Pence to take action (“Do you want to be a patriot or a pussy?”). But while Wolff’s anecdotes astound, he fails to put these events in a larger context, leaving the question of why Trump’s “ham-handed” disinformation campaign convinced so many Americans unanswered. The result is a dismaying yet unenlightening rehash of recent events.

The veteran journalist delivers an in-the-bunker account of the disastrous end of the Trump administration. Following Fire and Fury and Siege, Wolff makes it clear that Trump is our first postmodern president, completely uninterested in doing any real work but obsessed with the media and his media image: "What was on television left a greater impression on him than what was said to him, or what intelligence he received, or what facts were known." He surrounded himself with corrupt operators, cheerleaders, and, at the end, "crazies [who] kept identifying people who were even crazier." In this well-paced but seldom newsworthy account of the weeks between the 2020 election and the Trump family's anticlimactic departure on Inauguration Day, Wolff depicts a thoroughly inept, endlessly self-dealing swirl of hangers-on and sycophants whose goal was singular: to gain Machiavellian advantage while always "assuring the president that he was right." In between the lines, the author suggests that Trump was fully aware that his retinue was loyal in order to be rewarded and was contemptuous of them all. Regarding the associate who proved perhaps the most loyal in the end, Rudy Giuliani, Wolff writes that Trump has frozen him out of his would-be shadow government at Mar-a-Lago and won't pay any of his bills. Meanwhile, anyone with a wisp of competence was long gone before Election Day, leaving it to the likes of Sidney Powell to attempt to make Trump's case that the election had been stolen from him and to defend him in his second impeachment. A few memorable episodes make the book worthy of attention: Trump showing patent scorn for the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol at his behest or promising that he'll be back in 2024, ready to exact vengeance on everyone who's ever crossed him. A satisfying neck-craning look at the raging dumpster fire of Trump's final months in office.

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