Author | |
---|---|
Language | English |
Subject | Presidency of Donald Trump |
Publisher | Penguin Press (US), Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) |
Publication date | January 21, 2020 |
Publication place | United States |
Media type | Print (hardcover) |
Pages | 465 |
ISBN | 9781984877499 |
A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America is a 2020 book by Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig. The book presents an account of the first three years of the presidency of Donald Trump. It focuses on specific incidents of conflict with senior advisors, including former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. A Very Stable Genius ranked first on bestseller lists from The New York Times , USA Today , and Publishers Weekly , and received generally positive reviews in international media.
The title refers to a phrase Trump has repeatedly used to describe himself, starting in January 2018 when a book, Fire and Fury , raised questions about his mental stability. [1] Responding in a series of tweets, he said "Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart" and that his achievements in life qualified him as "not smart, but genius....and a very stable genius at that!" [2] He continued to describe himself as "a very stable genius" on multiple subsequent occasions. [2] [3] [4]
Rucker and Leonnig have suggested that A Very Stable Genius is an effort to make sense of conflicting images of Donald Trump as "a success, a master in some ways, and also a chaotic, undisciplined, impulsive leader". [5] The book draws on more than 200 interviews with sources, who are not named in the book. [5] [6] The authors requested an interview from Trump, but he declined their request. [7]
The book is organized around specific episodes of conflict within the Trump administration, under chapter titles that include "Unhinged", "Shocking the Conscience", and "Paranoia and Pandemonium". For example, the book highlights a July 2017 meeting at the Pentagon at which Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, among other senior advisors and generals, attempted to brief the president on the current state and projection of military power, with Trump responding negatively to their approach and reportedly calling them "losers", "dopes", and "babies", [6] then abruptly leaving the meeting, prompting Tillerson to reportedly refer to him as a "fucking moron". [8] In another episode, Trump reportedly tried to undo the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, saying it's "just so unfair that American companies aren’t allowed to pay bribes to get business overseas." When Tillerson told him it would need action by Congress, Trump reportedly instructed an aide to draft an executive action to repeal the law. [9]
The authors document a pattern in which Trump fired any and all advisors who tried to educate him or restrain his impulses – the so-called "grownups in the room" – replacing them with advisors who "think their mission is to tell him, 'Yes.'" [5] The book suggests that this consistent pattern of reliance on personal loyalty, combined with a disregard for consequences, has placed Trump in opposition to conventional democratic power structures in Washington, D.C., with apparently chaotic results. [10] Rucker and Leonnig particularly criticize Robert Mueller and his report on possible obstruction of justice, which they cite as an example of how bureaucracy and fact-finding have failed to provide effective external restraints on Trump's behavior. [11]
The book also highlights apparent gaps in the president's geopolitical knowledge, relating a story about a meeting with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi in which the American president reportedly claimed, incorrectly, that India and China do not share a border. [12] Another account describes him visiting Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona Memorial while apparently having no understanding of what actually happened there. [6]
In a 2018 article on the publishing market for books about Donald Trump, Steven Perlberg of BuzzFeed News reported that Rucker and Leonnig were collaborating on a new Trump book, and that unnamed reporters covering the president had "been approached with the promise of large six-figure advances". [13] North American rights to the book were purchased by Penguin Press, while UK and Commonwealth rights were purchased by Bloomsbury Publishing. US and UK editions were scheduled for simultaneous publication on January 21, 2020. [14]
Four days before the book's official release date, the Washington Post published an excerpt from the book highlighting Trump's confrontation with Secretary of State Tillerson and Secretary of Defense Mattis. [15] One day prior to the book's release, Trump accused Rucker and Leonnig of fabricating most of the stories in A Very Stable Genius, calling the authors "two stone cold losers". [16] A German translation, titled Trump gegen die Demokratie (lit. Trump against Democracy), was published by S. Fischer Verlag on the same release date as the English version. [17]
Reviews of the book have been positive, with special praise for the detail of the authors' research. In The New York Times , Dwight Garner called the authors "meticulous journalists", noting that "this taut and terrifying book is among the most closely observed accounts of Donald J. Trump’s shambolic tenure in office to date." [6] Writing for The Guardian , Lloyd Green called the book "richly sourced and highly readable", and observed that it provided a contrasting, "unsettling" account in comparison to other "tell-all or third-party confessional" books. [18] Comparing the book to Fire and Fury , Rieke Havertz of Die Zeit observed that the detailed factual portrayal of disturbing incidents in the Trump White House made the book read like a political thriller. [10]
Criticism of A Very Stable Genius has focused on sourcing and the overall purpose of the book. In The Washington Post , Joe Klein noted that the book's uneven sourcing made some portrayals of key figures less convincing than expected, but generally praised the book for showing that Trump "has created his own ideology and his own party". [12] Writing for The Times , Justin Webb criticized the tone and purpose of A Very Stable Genius, suggesting that the authors should have spent their time investigating infighting within the Democratic Party instead of writing "another of these breathless inside-the-Trump-White-House takes", but noted that the book was nonetheless useful for understanding Trump. [19] Peter Spiegel's review for the Financial Times also questioned the purpose of writing another detailed book that recounted well-known information about the administration, but ultimately concluded that the book provided a necessary reminder to readers that Trump's behavior is "aberrant". [20]
In its first week of release, A Very Stable Genius placed first on The New York Times Best Seller list in the hardcover nonfiction category, and first overall on the USA Today bestseller list. [21] [22] The book also placed first on the Publishers Weekly bestseller list for print books, and sold over 120,000 copies in all formats. [23]
Rex Wayne Tillerson is an American energy executive who served as the 69th United States secretary of state from 2017 to 2018 in the first administration of Donald Trump. From 2006 to 2016, he was chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of ExxonMobil.
Carol Duhurst Leonnig is an American investigative journalist. She has been a staff writer at The Washington Post since 2000, and was part of a team of national security reporters that won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for reporting that revealed the NSA's expanded spying on Americans. Leonnig also received Pulitzer Prizes for National Reporting in 2015 and 2018.
Joseph Francis Dunford Jr. is a retired United States Marine Corps general who served as the 19th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from October 1, 2015 to September 30, 2019. He was the 36th commandant of the Marine Corps. Dunford is the first Marine Corps officer to serve in four different four-star positions; the others include commander of the International Security Assistance Force and United States Forces – Afghanistan from February 2013 to August 2014, and as the thirty-second assistant commandant of the Marine Corps from October 23, 2010 to December 15, 2012. He has commanded several units, including the 5th Marine Regiment during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Brian H. Hook is an American diplomat, lawyer and government official. In 2021, he joined Cerberus Capital Management as vice chairman for global investments. He is an adjunct professor at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy.
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Kayleigh McEnany is an American conservative political commentator, television personality, and writer who served the administration of Donald Trump as the 33rd White House press secretary from April 2020 to January 2021.
Donald Trump assumed office as president of the United States on January 20, 2017, and his first term ended on January 20, 2021. The president has the authority to nominate members of his Cabinet to the United States Senate for confirmation under the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution.
Philip Rucker is an American reporter and author. He is currently the National Editor at The Washington Post, where he has been working since 2005.
The following is a timeline of the presidency of Donald Trump during the first quarter of 2018, from January 1 to March 31, 2018.
Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House is a 2018 book by journalist Michael Wolff which according to Wolff, details the behavior of U.S. President Donald Trump, the staff of his 2016 presidential campaign, and the White House staff. The title refers to a quote by Trump about the conflict with North Korea. The book became a New York Times number one bestseller. Reviewers generally accepted Wolff's portrait of a dysfunctional Trump administration, but were skeptical of many of Wolff's particular claims.
Very stable genius may refer to:
Fear: Trump in the White House is a nonfiction book by American journalist Bob Woodward about the presidency of Donald Trump. The book was released on September 11, 2018. Woodward based the book on hundreds of hours of interviews with members of the Trump administration. The book's publisher Simon & Schuster announced that it had sold 1.1 million copies in the first week of its release, making it the fastest selling opener in the company's history.
Alyssa Farah Griffin is an American political strategist and television personality. She was the White House director of strategic communications and Assistant to the President in 2020 during the presidency of Donald Trump. In addition to appearing on CNN as a commentator, she is a co-host of the talk show The View, for which she received a nomination for a Daytime Emmy Award.
Donald Trump, President-elect of the United States and former president from 2017 to 2021, has elicited highly polarized public perceptions about his performance as a head of state and largely negative opinions about his temperament and personal conduct while in office. Before entering politics, he was a businessman and television personality famous for his image as a real estate tycoon. Viewed as a heroic figure by many of his supporters, Trump was seen by some as a business "huckster" and was the frequent butt of jokes.
Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency is a nonfiction book by Michael Wolff. It was published by Henry Holt and Company in 2021. This book is the third in a nonfiction trilogy by Wolff updating information on the presidency of Donald Trump and focuses on the final days and the ending of Trump's presidency. The title come from the typical claim parroted by Trump himself, that he won ''in a landslide'' in the 2020 election.
I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year is a nonfiction book written by Washington Post reporters Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker. It was published by Penguin Press in 2021 and was a New York Times bestseller. I Alone Can Fix It is a follow-up to the two authors' 2020 book A Very Stable Genius and covers Donald Trump's last year in office during his first term as president of the United States. As David Smith of The Guardian newspaper pointed out, "both titles are direct Trump quotations loaded with irony." The authors interviewed 140 people for their material, including a two-and-a-half-hour interview with Trump himself. The book has generally received positive reviews by book critics.
Anthony M. Ornato is the former assistant director of the United States Secret Service Office of Training. He was the service's 34th special agent in charge who headed the security detail of president Donald Trump until being detailed to the White House where the president named him White House Deputy Chief of Staff for operations in December 2019. After his tenure as a government SES detailee in the Trump administration, he returned to the Secret Service where he worked as the assistant director in the office of training until August 29, 2022.