This book was so heavily publicized that you knew what it was going to say even before you started reading it. But I must admit that I was still shocked by what I read. The book covers Trump’s second presidency up to his attacks on Iran on February 27 2026, with a epilogue written in March 2026 when they interviewed him directly.
The subtitle of this book is “Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump”, and the term ‘imperial’ is apt. You get the sense of an all-powerful man, surrounded by acolytes, veering between mockery, rage and ennui, just as any Roman Emperor might have done.
I liked this description of his Oval Office:
By midway through the year, a picture was emerging of how the Oval Office operated in Trump’s second term. It was of a President spending his days at the Resolute Desk in a series of rolling bull sessions, accompanied by a core group of intimates; these were supplemented by a rotating cast of extras, and on any given day they could be Republican lawmakers, titans of industry, former pro wrestlers, country musicians, Gulf royals, crypto bros, or friends of felons seeking pardons. They would enter and exit the frame, with some invited to stay for meetings they had no business attending. The conversations ran fast, often straying far from the point, or from anything visitors imagined when they arrived at the White House. The President’s sentences often began on one topic and ended far away (p. 168)
The book is divided into four parts: Part I Whirlwind describing the initial weeks of the second Trump presidency, when he was released from the shackles that his first term team had placed on him, and juiced up by four years of planning his revenge. Part II is aptly named Retribution, as he pursued people who had acted against him in the intervening four years and as he ‘went after’ institutions like the Smithsonian Institute and the Kennedy Centre. Part III The Enemy Within explores his deployment of the National Guard and ICE agents, the shooting of Charlie Kirk and his attempts to indict James Comey and Letitia James. Part IV Plunder looks at his invasion of Venezuela and Trump’s yearning for the Nobel Peace Prize (what a joke!) and his deployment of Jarod Kushner and Steve Witkoff in the Middle East. The book then moves to Trump’s involvement in cryptocurrency and involvement with the tech bros. Trump then moves onto his ball room and Arc de Triomphe. The book comes to an end in February 2026 as Trump embarks on the Iran war.
My God, he is an awful man. Venal, obnoxious, vengeful and malicious. There’s nothing new in this book- we all know what he is- but such detail and the piling of event on event illustrates just how jaded and passive we have become. This is, of course, journalism- the first draft of history- but could the judgement of coming years be any more scathing than this?
And given that I’m posting this after the recent mid-term elections: thank God that democracy worked, in spite of all this.
My rating: 8.5/10
Sourced from: Yarra Plenty Regional Library
Read because: it was there on the shelf, and I was thinking of buying it anyway.
