And on that note I take a break from reading books on poli—Damn! New Michael Lewis book out about government!? ( )

No question that Wilson has a way with words, especially of the derogatory kind. But in between the quips, is a serious examination of how Trump has moved the traditional GOP completely off its conservative philosophy roots. He has little respect for the new GOP, a sycophantic oleaginous breed (to quote George Will) that thinks of nothing but collecting as much money for themselves and getting reelected.

They have apparently bought into the Trump way of doing business: borrow as much money as possible then stiff the contractors and workers, default on the loans, skim as much as possible, repeat infinitely. He thought he could do that in office. We have now learned from Rex Tillerson that the legality of a policy was irrelevant. Trump would just fire and replace with someone with fewer scruples. And then call the former names. Tillerson remarked about Trump, "It was challenging for me, coming from the disciplined, highly process-oriented Exxon Mobil Corporation, to go to work for a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn't like to read, doesn't read briefing reports, doesn't like to get into the details of a lot things." Trump bragged about being a non-reader and being undisciplined.

Some of the more juicy quotes:

“Everything about Trump’s opening speech was moral poison to anyone who believed in any part of the American dream. Everything about his nationalist hucksterism smelled like … a knock on the door of authoritarian statism.”
The right is “merrily on board with a lunatic with delusions of godhood”.
“There’s an odds-on chance that our grandchildren will hear this tale while hunched over guttering fires in the ruins of a radioactive Mad Max-style hellscape.” One can only hope Wilson is not prescient.
“All the things evangelicals had said for generations that made a candidate anathema were suddenly just fine … Being a goddamned degenerate pussy-grabber with a lifetime of adultery, venality, and dishonesty is not, to my knowledge, one of the core tenets of the Christian faith … Trump has opened entirely new theological avenues … There is literally not one aspect of Trump’s behavior as a citizen, a husband, and as a man that shows the slightest scintilla of repentance for anything, ever.”
The tax bill was a masterwork of “gigantic government giveaways, unfunded spending, massive debt and deficits, and a catalogue of crony capitalist freebies”.
Trump's far-flung empire of bullshit makes the Teapot Dome scandal look like a warm-up act in the Corruption Olympics. Trump has surrounded himself with Wall Street alumni “who have behaved with weapons-grade venality … and Master of the Dick affects. They were there … only for the tax bill. Nothing else ever mattered to any of them.”

The Trump administration has been “a hotbed of remarkably obvious pay-to-play and crony capitalist game-playing. How obvious? Think 1970s Times Square hooker on the corner obvious … The degree to which this president has monetized the presidency for the direct benefit of himself, his soft-jawed offspring, and his far-flung empire of bullshit makes the Teapot Dome scandal look like a warm-up act in the Corruption Olympics.”
The presidency “hasn’t been an endless exercise in self-fellation, until now”.
Wilson is sure the reason why Trump is so reluctant to release his taxes is that it will reveal numerous instances of "loans" that were really income received from Russian oligarchs through shell companies with no expectation they woujld ever be paid back. Paul Manafort got in serious trouble for the same shenanigans. It has a name: tax fraud.
The question now (read just after the Capitol insurrection) is whether the thing that dies will be the GOP. ( )

It is hard to argue with much of what Wilson has to say about Trump, his enablers and defenders, including figures like Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller and various figures in the "Alt-Right." But while acknowledging that the worst aspects of Trumpism didn't begin with the Dear Leader himself, he doesn't fully come to terms with the role of Republican leaders, including Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich and John McCain (by picking Sarah Palin as his running mate), in making a Trump presidency possible. Wilson denounces Paul Ryan for his enabling Trump and the lack of courage to speak up and act to fight to preserve Congress's role as a coequal branch of government, but he has too little to say, for example, about the GOP leaders whose responses to Trump's birther campaign against President Obama helped to create the 2015-16 Trump phenomenon. When Wilson steps into his traditional GOP role, dishing out attacks on Democrats and liberals, he sounds a lot like the party operatives he sometimes condemns in these pages. It's worth noting that he is still one of them and likely will be again.

Probably, the best response to this type of work is to welcome it and acknowledge that for now there is one big fight worth waging, and all allies in the effort to defeat Trumpism must be welcomed until that fight is won. But it is also wise to remember that some of those in the Never Trump movement will never be true allies of those who oppose Trump's GOP from across the partisan divide. Wilson is an entertaining writer and commentator, and he remains a partisan GOP strategist and man of the right. ( )

Full disclosure: I am not a republican, nor am I a fan of Rick Wilson's political/personal attack campaign strategies. I did, however, think it would be interesting to see the Trump Issue from a lifelong republican insider perspective.

To say I'm disappointed is a whopping understatement.

A postive to start with: Wilson has an entertaining, easily accessible writing style, with occasional moments of real humor. I was especially interested in the opening chapters, as we see how and why Trump, a grumpy reality TV star with terrible business sense, made it to the highest office in our country.

Now, what I disliked: Rick Wilson is as adept at name-calling and bullying as Trump is. We have a steady barrage of insults throughout the book. I found the childish name-calling excessive, and I thought the juvenile approach trivialized the seriousness of the subject matter.

Wilson includes a section directed at democrats. Here, I was hoping for a grownup to step in and help bridge this ever-growing party divide. But no, Wilson instead lumped all democrats into the stupid libtard category, overgeneralizing concepts and mostly saying we should all be republicans.

Then we get to the section on racism, where he dumps the current crisis solely in the lap of Trump and the alt-right. He clearly worships the republican party, effectively freeing them all of any association with racist views over the years. Also, every single republican president prior to Trump was perfect, and every democratic president only managed to not screw things up because republicans held them in check. C'mon.

So, while I did manage to read this book, I had to take frequent breaks because this author makes me almost as angry as one of Trump's tweets. If his intent was to help Trump polarize the country, he succeeded. ( )

A hilarious extended exercise in invective by a conservative operative who drew the line at supporting Trump. He takes on anyone and everyone—though the one target he doesn’t aim at much is Russia.

This liberal enjoyed reading it. ( )