Following his or her shocking, bombshell essay in the New York Times last year, an anonymous senior official in the Trump administration has gone into more detail in this new book: A Warning.
Our first question is: Who is writing this book? After reading it, I cannot tell you who it is though I expect we will know soon enough, surely this person will come clean and claim some fame sometime in the next 1 – 5 years when we have a new president.
I can tell you that the author is a lifelong republican. He or she is deeply trusted in the administration. He or she sees Trump on a daily basis, when he emerges each morning from his “prime tweeting hour.” He or she began to question loyalty to the President after John McCain’s death and what he or she saw as the President’s “spite” towards a dead man. He or she has a great interest in history. This person claims to have stayed in the administration to try and guide the president’s impulses as best as one can. However, this author wants Donald Trump voted out of office in November of 2020 and has written this book to help that cause.
Some who have not read this book may discount it as being written by an “Anonymous.” I assure you it should note be discounted. The details fit well into a picture we have already began to put together from various other sources.
The intended audience of book is people who voted for Trump and are still making excuses for him.
Much of the book accounts the president’s lack of mental state to deal with this level of responsibility. These examples focus on his inattentiveness and his impulsiveness, also his level of “intellectual laziness” primarily that he won’t read anything and cannot stick to an opinion.
“All I can tell you is that normal people who spend any time with Donald Trump are uncomfortable by what they witness. He stumbles, slurs, gets confused, is easily irritated, and has trouble synthesizing information, not occasionally but with regularity. Those who would claim otherwise are lying to themselves or to the country.”
“The process of briefing the president is an experience that no description can fully capture.” Briefers cannot compose or share lengthy documents because the president will not read them. PowerPoint was preferred because he is a visual learner. OK, they initially thought, people learn in different ways. But then they were told to cut down briefings to three main points. Even briefings on military readiness or the federal budget. But the briefers soon realized they could only talk about ONE main point and had to keep repeating it over and over because he can’t focus on more than one point during a meeting. “As a result, complex proposals were reduced to a single page (or ideally a paragraph) and translated into Trump’s ‘winners and losers’ tone.”
Many of these personality traits have been gleamed by many of us in other readings and accounts. None of this was surprising to me, and it is extremely disturbing to imagine these characteristics defining the most powerful office in the world.
During the next part of the book, I realized it was written for republicans because the author focuses on Trump’s abdication of conservative policies, including free trade and lowering spending. Anonymous then goes into classifying the rest of the advisors as Trump Apologists, “defined by their shared willingness to excuse the inexcusable” and then explains and classifies each type of apologist. I honestly skimmed much of this as I was disturbed enough by this point.
In closing, the author strongly warns against re-electing this man because we have thus far been lucky to avoid “a monumental international crisis” since he took office. When that crisis comes I can’t imagine anyone who has read this book would want this man in charge of it.
S/he warns democrats:
“I implore you, if you want a majority of our nation to reject Donald Trump, you must show wisdom and restraint in selecting your party’s nominee. Resist the temptation to swerve away from the mainstream…If however you nominate someone who campaigns on unity instead of ideological purity, you will have a sizable number of Republicans and independents ready to make common cause.”
S/he says to republicans:
“If we had courage, the Republican party would seriously consider replacing President Trump at the top of the ticket. I know firsthand that leading GOP officials would like to dump the president if there was a strong candidate willing to step forward. They talk about it behind closed doors. Many Republican senators and congressmen are itching for someone else, despite the fact that they pay homage in public to the current occupant of the Oval Office.”
In summary, this book paints a disturbing picture, but not one that has not been leaked before. However, it does speak to those who may still not be completely disturbed, so I hope the book can get into the hands of those people.