Book Review: A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America

(Bought at Central Books used bookstore in Doylestown, Pa for $4.95) Maybe I'm a masochist, but I felt I needed to read as many books about Trump as possible in order to understand what's going on right now and to be prepared if anyone tries to get into an argument with me about his lack of fitness for office. I bought this book thinking it would cover Trump's actions after he lost the 2020 election, but it was published before then and only goes up to the end of 2019. The Mueller report is the framing device for this overview of the first three years of Trump's erratic, impulse-driven administration. Rucker and Leonnig are experienced, detail-oriented reporters for the Washington Post and they deliver a dense, insightful accounting of his petty, ill-informed governance style. Cabinet members and administrators come and go like riders on an out-of-control merry-go-round. Policy decision are made off the cuff without research or advice from experienced experts. It's all Trump's gut and how he feels at any given moment. I wish I had kept a list of his bad decisions and actions, but I have a life.

A few that stood out for me: believing Kim Jong Un had nothing to do with the death of American prisoner Otto Warmbier (and not getting any sort of a treaty with Kim); withdrawing from Syria and lying to American troops that they only received a raise because he authorized it when it fact they had been getting raises for decades; believing Putin over his own intelligence agencies about Russian interference with the 2016 election. And that's not even counting the blunders of the COVID pandemic which happened after the book came out.

Current polls show Trump leading Biden. This is terrifying. Trump is reckless and dangerous. Just today on MSNBC, Anne Applebaum of the Atlantic convincingly argued that if elected, Trump will pull us out of NATO which could be catastrophic for the world balance of power and embolden Putin to take more than Ukraine. If you care about women's reproductive rights, you can kiss them goodbye. Look at what just happened in Texas. A woman whose health would be seriously impacted unless she gets an abortion was turned down by the state supreme court. Liz Chaney has said we are sleepwalking to a dictatorship. I can see backing a Republican like Nikki Haley if you are a conservative, but why would you willingly vote in a wanna-be dictator? And don't forget there will be no "adults in the room" this time. Just lapdogs and sychophants. This book documents Trump's reckless, ill-informed behavior. It's a warning and more people should read it instead of carping about false issues like Biden's age, transgender youth in sports or a bad economy which even Fox News admits is really doing well.