Unbelievable

April 1, 2017

On the potholed presidential trail during 2015-16, NBC reporter Tur was routinely scorned by Republican candidate Donald Trump, who called her disgraceful, third-rate, and more. During one rally, the atmosphere became so vicious that Tur had to be escorted to her car by the Secret Service. Incensed viewers responded vigorously by tweeting #imwithtur. Here's her ringside view of the campaign. With a 200,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 18, 2017
NBC News political journalist Katy Tur offers an entertaining personal account of the nearly two years she spent covering Donald Trumpâs rise to the presidency, âthe most unlikely, exciting, ugly, trying, and all-around bizarre campaign in American history.â Trumpâs presidential run was a surreal experience for many Americans, but for Tur it was also life-changing: she was a relatively unknown London-based foreign correspondent enjoying quiet weekends in Paris and a self-described âpolitical novice" when she got the call to go on the road with Trump in the spring of 2015. âSix weeks, tops,â her bosses told her. Overnight, Turâs life became a blur of planes, cars, buses, hotel rooms, dry shampoo, bad food, rowdy and often disturbing campaign rallies, and headline-grabbing tweet storms. Some 500 grueling days later, Trump was presidentâand Tur had emerged as a battle-tested fixture of the NBC News political team. She was a frequent target of Trumpâs, who famously nicknamed her âLittle Katyâ and whipped his crowds into such an antimedia frenzy that she occasionally required a security detail. While Tur recalls many of the campaignâs unusual moments (Trump defending his penis size in a presidential debate; his hawking of steaks and bottled water at a press conference; the Access Hollywood tape) Turâs narrative is light on political analysis, and it mostly avoids the central question pundits will be exploring for years to come: how did Trump actually win? But Tur's brisk behind-the-scenes account humanizes the press corps, illuminates life on the campaign trail, and delivers on its promise: "I wonât pretend to explain it,â Tur writes, but âI will tell you what I saw.â

One of Donald Trump's favorite media targets tells how she attained that distinction in this spry look at the 2016 campaign.NBC News correspondent Tur covered the presidential campaign from the very start, with Trump in her sights for more than 500 grueling days. At the beginning, she writes, she informed the disbelieving hosts of Today that, even after Trump's opening remark that "when Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best," he was polling strongly in bellwether New Hampshire. "Trump wasn't part of anyone's plan," she writes, adding, "for that matter, neither was I." However, Trump managed to tap into a deep well of resentment and anger among disaffected voters who were content to trade in old notions of truth and decency for Trump's wild ride. Trump's own encounters with Tur were just as resentful and angry: he complained that she wouldn't look at him and was distorting words she was quoting verbatim, and she had a special knack for upsetting him. "His rage didn't register in the moment," she writes in a post-mortem of an early encounter. "I thought it was all part of his shtick. The reality show star. But watching his face on-screen, it's clear Trump isn't playing." Still, praise came from the author's colleagues, and even, on occasion, from Trump himself, who grudgingly allowed that Tur was better than most reporters. In Tennessee, "he tried to introduce me to a crowd...a hand on my shoulder like I was his wife." Trump's anger, page after page of it, is discomfiting, and Tur's reactions to it seem to verge on symptoms of PTSD. Even so, her own back-of-the-envelope analyses are borne out by subsequent events, as when she writes, "Trump is crude, and in his halo of crudeness other people get to be crude as well." A thoughtful account of covering what the author rightly calls "the most unlikely, exciting, ugly, trying, and all-around bizarre campaign in American history."

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