Reviews for Frankly, We Did Win This Election

by Michael C. Bender

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Wall Street Journal senior White House reporter Bender turns in an engaging fly-on-the-wall account of the losing Trump 2020 campaign.Im the president, and Im going to stay the president. So said the former president, who, throughout this circumstantial narrative, wanders hallways late at night, bewildered that it didnt work out that way. Trump, of course, is famously unreflectivethough also a fan of magical thinking, as when he asserted that Covid-19 was simply going to go away. Paranoid and superstitious, Trump tried in vain to reconstruct the 2020 campaign so that it went exactly like 2016, but he failed at every turn. Trump had made derisive nicknames his hallmark but couldnt find the handle in 2020, Bender writes, to give just one example. He tried at least ten different times to rename the former vice president. Sleepy Joe was one of the first and most common, but that didnt sound like a villain so much as someone who needed to go to bed at 9:00 p.m. Benders account would be a comedy of errors if Trump werent so spectacularly unfunny. As Trump flubbed at every turn, his support team was even more incompetent, from a clueless Ivanka to a raging Don Jr. to a panoply of advisers whose chief interest seemed to be to soak the campaign for every cent they could. Ranging from the halls of power to the Front Row Joes who dutifully showed up for every Trump rally, Bender delivers a nuanced, sharp account whose leitmotif is puzzlement: Trumps that he lost, Mitch McConnells that Trump wouldnt let it go (he tried to get Bill Barr to convince Trump to back off his claims of election fraud), and Mike Pompeos that, as he put it late in the day, the crazies have taken over.A thoroughly revealing account of a spectacularly inept presidential campaign that politics junkies will eat up. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.


Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Wall Street Journal senior White House reporter Bender turns in an engaging fly-on-the-wall account of the losing Trump 2020 campaign. “I’m the president, and I’m going to stay the president.” So said the former president, who, throughout this circumstantial narrative, wanders hallways late at night, bewildered that it didn’t work out that way. Trump, of course, is famously unreflective—though also a fan of magical thinking, as when he asserted that Covid-19 was simply “going to go away.” Paranoid and superstitious, Trump tried in vain to reconstruct the 2020 campaign so that it went exactly like 2016, but he failed at every turn. “Trump had made derisive nicknames his hallmark but couldn’t find the handle in 2020,” Bender writes, to give just one example. “He tried at least ten different times to rename the former vice president. ‘Sleepy Joe’ was one of the first and most common, but that didn’t sound like a villain so much as someone who needed to go to bed at 9:00 p.m.” Bender’s account would be a comedy of errors if Trump weren’t so spectacularly unfunny. As Trump flubbed at every turn, his support team was even more incompetent, from a clueless Ivanka to a raging Don Jr. to a panoply of advisers whose chief interest seemed to be to soak the campaign for every cent they could. Ranging from the halls of power to the “Front Row Joes” who dutifully showed up for every Trump rally, Bender delivers a nuanced, sharp account whose leitmotif is puzzlement: Trump’s that he lost, Mitch McConnell’s that Trump wouldn’t let it go (he tried to get Bill Barr to convince Trump to back off his claims of election fraud), and Mike Pompeo’s that, as he put it late in the day, “the crazies have taken over.” A thoroughly revealing account of a spectacularly inept presidential campaign that politics junkies will eat up. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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