Sinking in the Swamp

February 3, 2020
Daily Beast reporters Markay and Suebsaeng detail their interactions with the Trump administration in this gossip-fueled comedy of errors. Focusing on obscure campaign officials, low-level White House staffers, and “D-listers” orbiting around the presidency, Markay and Suebsaeng argue that to truly understand this political moment, observers must study the people riding the president’s coattails. Their anecdotes feature Trump’s favorite teleprompter operator playing Candy Crush to warm up his fingers before a speech; actor Jon Voight mistaking Suebsaeng for campaign finance chairman Steve Mnuchin; press secretary Anthony Scaramucci “hunting for the leakers of information that he himself had leaked”; and the “mattress saga” that took down EPA chief Scott Pruitt. Many of these tales are thirdhand, and much of the book rehashes events that are either well-known or less than consequential. But the authors’ colorful prose and willingness to ridicule themselves (“we have been two little piglets in the Trump years, gleefully inhaling the muck and empty calories”) entertain, and their jibes frequently contain sharp insights into “Trumpworld.” This irreverent, darkly humorous account will resonate with readers who look at the White House and see, as the authors do, “a circus of crookedness, incompetence, and rank dishonesty.”

A dishy takedown of the mediocrities, charlatans, and grifters populating the corridors of power in D.C. A trigger warning that there's naughty language ahead: As Daily Beast investigative reporters Markay and Suebsaeng write, they wanted to call their book Another Shitstorm in Fucktown: The Donald J. Trump Odyssey. Though the powers that be at their agency and publisher said no--think of the Costco and Walmart sales forgone--the authors allow that "we thought it felt like the only title that fully captured the essence of what the Trump era was really like." There are plenty of people in the capital who won't talk to the duo: the lieutenants and foot soldiers who enable the current occupant of the White House, men and women whom they refer to as "Trumpworld's Henry Hills." The reference, of course, is to the Mafia hit man who served the Lucchese crime family and inspired the film Goodfellas. While the authors aver that their sights are on those loyalists, they can't keep their eyes off the prize, Trump himself, with his addled visions of being beloved by the show business figures in whose ranks he thinks he belongs. There's lots of gossipy stuff here that readers may not have found in other sources--e.g., that a game designer sued Trump for ripping off a Monopoly-ish board game or that Trump used to litter the floor of the Apprentice studio with sucked-on Tic Tacs for the sheer joy of knowing that some peon had to clean up after him. The big picture isn't much different from books such as Bob Woodward's Fear and David Cay Johnston's It's Even Worse Than You Think, but Markay and Suebsaeng are so breathless that it's like reading Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon after a healthy diet of Peter Biskind and David Thomson. Middling, but readers who can't get enough dirt on Trump and associates will revel in it.

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