Sunday Book Review – 11/24/19

Bookshelf books, photo by Alien Motives

A Warning by Anonymous (2019, Twelve)

I’ll make it simple: buy this book. Then try to convince someone who’s not solidly in the Trump camp to read it.

The author is described as “A senior Trump adminstration official” and they adequately explain in the opening why they are not attaching their name to the work. Simply put, they are fully aware of the usual tactic by Donald Trump and his supporters to deflect criticism by attacking the messenger. In this case, by removing their name, they hope to undermine any such efforts.

It’s worth a shot. The book details, in personal detail, what the jobs of senior staffers to Trump are like. They provide examples of poor decisions. They make clear that there are no grand chess games nor Machiavellian play against foreign enemies; rather, what is seen is the real Donald Trump, and the real Donald Trump is a petty, reactionary man with a disinclination toward any effort at learning the basic requirements of the job of President.

They explain how and why staffers have stepped into the President’s orbit, and provide an explanation of how some people, such as General Kelly, worked to promote traditionally Republican policy under Trump while guiding him away from decisions which would be obviously dangerous to the nation. Examples abound throughout the book.

Many of the general efforts, if not the exact examples of them, have been chronicled in prior books such as Woodward’s Fear. It adds a sense of accuracy to A Warning. Even those who are intimately familiar with the prior books will find new examples of the President’s poor decision making within these pages.

The key thrust of the book, though, is to convince Republicans not to vote for Trump again because of their principles. The third chapter explains, in concrete and basic terms, what the core values of most Republicans are, from whence those values came and how far afield from those values is President Trump.

The rest of the book could be summed up as follows: The people who used to push the President to stick to Republican principles are almost all gone, and those who remain are sycophants or people interested in pushing a personal agenda. When people look back at the prior years and talk about the positives, such as deregulation and appointing conservative judges, they have to realize those were enacted because Trump was pushed toward them, and the people who pushed aren’t there anymore. Trump is operating without any self-checking tendencies, his default tendencies are to violate the law and demand individual rights be restricted, and if he is re-elected the results will be disastrous for the nation.

Examples are given. Many examples. There’s not much that’s truly new for the experienced political debater, but having insider verification and clarification on topics is valuable.

It also might be enough to convince some people to back away from their support of a man who is, according to his own senior staffers, actively dangerous for the country.

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About AlienMotives 1991 Articles
Ex-Navy Reactor Operator turned bookseller. Father of an amazing girl and husband to an amazing wife. Tired of willful political blindness, but never tired of politics. Hopeful for the future.