A very stable genius : donald j. trump and the testing of america

by Philip Rucker

Other authorsCarol Leonnig (Author.)
Paper Book, 2020

Status

Available

Call number

973.933 Rucker

Barcode

11658

Genres

Publication

New York : Penguin Press, 2020.

Description

Politics. Nonfiction. HTML: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 Times Washington 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   �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)

Media reviews

Open Letters Review
By now, four years into Donald Trump’s nearly-inconceivable first term in the Oval Office, the pattern of such books is well-known. ... Those cycles are the fuel for all such Trump books, and the combustion is the simmer of impotent outrage felt throughout the country every minute of every day by
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 the majority of the population who correctly see Trump as an existential threat to the survival of the idea itself of the United States. ... But a noteworthy Trump book is still a Trump book, and by now one other thing is known about them: they’re every bit as sordid, opportunistic, and money-grubbing as their subject. They can’t help but be; if you touch the pitch of a lifelong grifter and conman like Trump, for a book contract, no amount of credentials will save you from being defiled.
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The Guardian (UK)
Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post offer A Very Stable Genius. As befitting Pulitzer winners for investigative reporting, their book is richly sourced and highly readable. It sheds new light on how the 45th president tests the boundaries of the office while trying the patience
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 and dignity of those who work for or with him. It is not just another Trump tell-all or third-party confessional. It is unsettling, not salacious. ... Leonnig and Rucker quote Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution, who says Trump “appears to be daring the rest of the political system to stop him – and if it doesn’t he’ll go further. The law has no force without people who are willing to enforce it.”
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The Washington Post
Rucker and Leonnig offer lots of gory details about the president. He blusters about, desperately solipsistic, relentlessly ignorant. His gaffes are breathtaking. And yet, gradually, despite the consternation of his aides (and the authors’ narrative intent), Trump emerges as more than just a
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 needy adolescent throwing spitballs at the deep state. He has a definite worldview and a strategy, a feral brilliance that has cracked the political code in the digital, postmillennial era. ... Rucker and Leonnig’s sources make much of the need to keep guard rails on the president, but Trump has his own rigorous set of boundaries: He will always appear tough. He will always be crude. He will be relentless in his pursuit of his agenda. The problem is, ultimately, that the world is more complex than any ideology, especially one so simple as Trump’s.
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New York Times
Rucker and Leonnig have composed their book, they write, out of a desire to step out of the churning news cycle and “assess the reverberations” of Trump’s presidency. The result is a chronological account of the past three years in Washington, based on interviews with more than 200 sources.
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 ... It reads like a horror story, an almost comic immorality tale. It’s as if the president, as patient zero, had bitten an aide and slowly, bite by bite, an entire nation had lost its wits and its compass.
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NPR
Rucker and Leonnig's mission is manifest in their title, a sarcastic jab at one of Trump's more memorable moments of self-congratulation. Accused of being either unthinking or unstable, Trump at the time denied being either. He was, he said, "a very stable genius." Whether the president meant that
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 with a touch of self-deprecating humor or not, it functions here as the epitome of self-delusion. ... Older readers may recoil from much of this assessment — not only because the behavior described is repellent, but also because its depiction in such relentlessly damning detail is disturbing. People naturally ask: How much of this can be true? ... there is something unsettling about the evolution of this genre. Is it purely a matter of Trump's excesses or has he occasioned a sea change in journalism as well?
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Language

English

Original publication date

2020

ISBN

9781984877499

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