The problem that Leibovich (now a staff writer at The Atlantic) faced in interpreting Trump-era politics was that its lead figure was so monotonous and monomaniacal (albeit dangerous and deranged) that the author couldn’t repeat the formula he used to such entertaining effect in his 2013 book, “This Town,” which profiled the Washington insiders and A-listers circling around the Obama White House. “I had heard this all before,” Leibovich reflected later, “and was ready for it to end after about two minutes.” In June 2017, the New York Times chief national correspondent Mark Leibovich visited the White House and was unexpectedly ushered into the Oval Office, where he found President Donald Trump watching (what else?) “Fox & Friends.” Trump issued a perfunctory denunciation of Leibovich’s then-employer and launched into his familiar litany of grievances and obsessions. We can check out any time we want, but only time will tell if we can ever leave.THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVITUDE: Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission, by Mark Leibovich
Thank You for Your Servitude isn’t another view from the Oval Office: it’s the view from the Trump Hotel. It’s a vista that makes the Washington of This Town seem like a comedy of manners in comparison. All that cynicism, shading into nihilism, led to a country truly unhinged from reality, and to the events of January 6, 2021. Meanwhile, many of the most alpha of the lapdogs happily conceded to Mark Leibovich that they were “in on the joke.”Īs Lindsey Graham told the author, his supporters in South Carolina generally don’t read The New York Times, and they won’t read this book, either. Trump’s savage bullying of everyone in his circle, along with his singular command of his political base, created a dangerous culture of submission in the Republican Party. What would these politicos do to preserve their place in the sun, or at least the orbit of the spray tan? What would they do to preserve their “relevance”? Almost anything, it turns out. Thank You for Your Servitude is Mark Leibovich’s unflinching account of the moral rout of a major American political party, tracking the transformation of Rubio, Cruz, Graham, and their ilk into the administration’s chief enablers, and the swamp’s lesser lights into frantic chasers of the grift.
Even more, in their outrage: Trump was a menace and an affront to our democracy. In the early months of Trump’s candidacy, the Republican Party’s most important figures, people such as Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Lindsey Graham, were united-and loud-in their scorn and contempt. From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller This Town, the eyewitness account of how the GOP collaborated with Donald Trump to transform Washington’s “swamp” into a gold-plated hot tub-and a onetime party of rugged individualists into a sycophantic personality cult.
0 kommentar(er)
