This is a book with two authors listed and a third one apparently sitting in the Oval Office. Because two years after the election, Lewandowski and Bossie (Trump campaign manager and deputy, respectively) are still out there, still getting Trump's point of view across to the public, still presenting his beliefs and opinions and spin as fact, even when doing so means writing things that are completely untrue (see below). Only now they have a mass marketed book (in four different formats) to do it with, not just tv appearances.
In the beginning, Lewandowski explains the idea of their book to the president -- it will be all about Trump's "enemies". (Spoiler—there are many). The president gives his blessing to the project, even giving his first-ever book interview to the duo, clearly confident that finally there will be a book that will be faithful to Trump's point of view--on everything. And so it is.
The authors claim that this is the "true story" of the administration and the people who work in it, not because they work in it (they don't), but because "we know the president well". And, since the president is the only source of truth per them and him, "knowing the president well" is all that is needed to discredit each and every person who dares to have a different idea, opinion or understanding about policy or governing than Donald Trump.
Three words/phrases that you won't find in this book are: "democracy", "Constitution" and "the rule of law". That's because the current president of the United States doesn't believe in them. And neither, apparently, do the authors--at least not whenever "democracy, the Constitution and the rule of law" conflict with whatever the president wants to say or do or tweet.
Think I'm exaggerating? This is a bit about President Trump's “enemies” from page 7. "Unelected bureaucrats, in agencies like the EPA and the Dept of Agriculture, are trying to stall the president's priorities at every turn, even refusing direct orders. Some of the people at the White House...couldn't and shouldn't be trusted. Then there was the constant assault by Fake News, the liberal elites, and the Democrats all of whom have a stake in seeing President Trump and by extension our country fail." (The poor punctuation is theirs, and it's indicative of the poor proofreading in general--"thought" for "though" and things like saying Putin annexed Ukraine and threatened Crimea rather than the other way around.)
"...all of whom have a stake in seeing President Trump--and, by extension, our country--fail."
This is one of their two main points in this book. #1 is - Support for Donald Trump = support for the country. Opposition to Trump = you're an enemy of Trump and "by extension" of the United States itself. And, yes, this is how authoritarians and dictators govern.
The president's ignorance of civics displayed throughout this book is breathtaking. After nearly two years in office, he still displays zero understanding that the Constitution specifies "three CO-EQUAL branches of government" or the essential importance of "checks and balances" on the power of each branch by the other two. (Think it's Fake News, Mr. President? Take a look at the Constitution. Articles 1, 2 and 3. After that, you should move on to the Bill of Rights--starting with the First Amendment, another refutation of the way you think this all should work.)
The second purpose of this book is: #2 To discredit the Russia investigation. This entails some fancy footwork (meaning, most often, ignoring a lot of facts in order to create a narrative that Trump will completely approve of instead.) For example, to the authors, like Trump likes to say, the Russia investigation was begun by Hillary Clinton as an excuse for losing the election. That's false.
(They conveniently leave out that she won the popular vote by 3 million votes--a fact that Trump hates to be reminded of. Instead they describe his Electoral College win by 74 votes -- out of 535 possible -- as a "blowout". Which it wasn't, relying on a surprising, and scant, 77,000 votes in Penn., Wisconsin, and Michigan combined.)
They claim Hillary started this idea about Putin and Russia --and can't even find a quote to support it since there isn't even one to twist. They ignore the Oct 7, 2016 statement by Brennan and Clapper explaining that Russia was interfering. The authors characterize the whole thing later as Russia spreading "funny anti-Clinton memes" on social media and "some hackers".
And on and on it goes. (It's not odd like they think it is, for example, for Obama to say after the election that Trump knew about Putin's interference in the election. Obama wasn't suggesting Trump was complicit. Obama knew that Trump was being BRIEFED on it for months after winning the GOP nomination. Also the FBI told him that Russians were trying to get access to his campaign and to let them know if anyone contacted them. Russians did contact them, but the campaign never reported it. Instead, when offered dirt on Hillary by Russia, Don Jr's now famous words were, "I love it!" You won't learn the facts of that Trump Tower meeting in June from Lewandowski and Bossie (or that the president later wrote a fake explanation for it to the New York Times a year later--while still denying he knew anything about it at the time).
The idea that Russia intervened with the goal of getting Trump elected was told to him after the election, in Trump's January 2017 intel briefing where he also learned about the Steele dossier (work by a former MI6 agent whom, unsurprisingly, Lewandowski and Bossie repeatedly misrepresent and mock, as they do every official involved in the Russia investigation.) January was also when the public learned about the unanimous intelligence community assessment that Putin had directed the year-long Russian interference in the election and that, for most of that time, their goal was to make Donald Trump president.
Comey briefed Trump about the Steele dossier because the FBI had heard that the press had the dossier and that it was likely to be made public soon. They wanted him to be prepared when that happened, and not blind-sided. Sure enough, a few days later, CNN's top reporters disclosed the most significant part--that Russia had likely hold over Trump via blackmail or "kompromat". But the same day, BuzzFeed published the whole thing and instead of focusing on CNN's report, the public discussion was about rumored salacious actions in a Moscow Ritz-Carlton. Too bad that CNN's main point--like Steele's--was lost in the weeks that followed. The former MI6 agent (fluent in Russian and in charge of the MI6 Russia desk for years) wanted to alert Americans to the threat he felt Putin's "kompromat" over Trump would pose to our democracy if Trump became president. You won't find any of this in "Trump's Enemies" where Steele is just one of many Deep State enemies (including MI6, the CIA, NSA and FBI) out to "get" Donald Trump.
This book should be fact-checked for both of the authors' goals -- #1 that everything Trump says is correct and should be uncritically supported by everyone; and that those who don't do that are "enemies" of the state; and #2 the Russia investigation is illegitimate (they make this point only by repeatedly misrepresenting the facts). As a side note, it is interesting how frantic the president's tweets are about Mueller, over and over, when Mueller and his team have still never said or written ONE WORD about President Trump. (Who says these tirades show "consciousness of guilt"? Not Bossie and Lewandowski. They don't even mention them.)
And they're intentionally wrong about how the Russia investigation started. It wasn't because of the Steele dossier. Even the Republican House Intell Committee report acknowledged it started because George Papadopoulos told an Australian diplomat in a London bar that he knew Russians had hacked DNC email. When hacked emails were made public by "Guccifer 2.0" (later identified as members of the GRU, the Russian military intelligence) in July, the diplomat contacted the FBI. Suspecting that Papadopoulos had insider information from the Kremlin about Russian efforts to sabotage the Clinton campaign, the FBI opened a counterintelligence (espionage) investigation of Papadopoulos.
(As Comey repeatedly told Trump, during Comey's tenure, the FBI never opened an investigation into Trump himself. However, there's good indication that has changed since Trump fired Comey and a few days later DAG Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as the special counsel. At a minimum, it appears Trump is under investigation for "obstruction of justice" related to firing Comey and other actions in his first two years as president. With Michael Flynn and others pleading guilty and giving information to Mueller, Trump may now also be implicated in "conspiracy with Russia to defraud the people of the United States" as well. His tweets may also have opened him up to charges of witness tampering.)
Here's the authors' take on intelligence officials and the investigation of whether the Trump campaign (possibly Trump himself) colluded/conspired with Russia: "Led by former CIA Director John Brennan, the upper echelons of the IC and federal law enforcement have waged a full-on war against the president. The fiction of Russian collusion has been the culmination of their efforts."
Then comes this: "What follows.. is our first-person account of the war against President Donald J. Trump, which is being waged at various levels of the intelligence community, the halls of the Congress, and even from inside the White House itself."
I deliberated between "1 star" and "2 star" settling on "2 star" only because this is a direct line to the thinking of the President of the United States. And that mindset, dangerous as it is, is something every American should be aware of—especially this—that if you don't agree with him, he considers you an enemy. And not just an enemy of Trump personally, but of the country. (Oh. And for people who are so concerned with "Fake News" they throw out many inflammatory "quotes" -- yet have not even one footnote giving the supposed source. Not one.)
This completely pro-Trump book gives an insider's look at the mind of the president and it can be a prism for things we see and hear from him every day. If you get in line, you're okay. If not? You're an enemy--of him and of the country.
It is chilling.
- Amazon Business : For business-only pricing, quantity discounts and FREE Shipping. Register a free business account
