 | |
| Author | Peter Bergen |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Political |
| Publisher | Penguin Press |
Publication date | December 10, 2019 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 386 |
| ISBN | 978-0525522416 |
Trump and His Generals: The Cost of Chaos is a book written by CNN's Peter Bergen. It was published in 2019 by Penguin Press in New York. The book offers an insider's perspective of President Donald Trump's approach to foreign policy during the first three years of his presidency.
Derek Chollet, writing for The Washington Post, declared that Trump and His Generals is "a deeply informed study, written with clarity and flair ... [which] is the best single account of Trump's foreign policy to date." [1]
Eliot A. Cohen, reviewing the book in The New York Times, stated that Trump and His Generals contains "the spectacular flameouts, ... the kooky theories of 'The Fourth Turning'" and raises "some important questions about the outlandish and sordid tale" of the Trump presidency. [2]
Aram Bakshian in The Washington Times offered an alternate take on Bergen's work, opining that Trump and His Generals "purports to show how The Donald is a dangerous, addle-brained commander in chief ... [b]ut great chunks of it reveal ... what is wrong ... with the entrenched Washington establishment that has tried to thwart [Trump's] presidency at every turn." [3]
Jeff Goodell in Rolling Stone avers that "Bergen’s book reads like an all-too prescient guidebook of how Trump would take America to war in the Middle East." [4]
Historian Max Boot wrote in Foreign Affairs that the book is "a fair and comprehensive overview of Trump's foreign policy." [5]
Max Boot is an American author, editorialist, lecturer, and military historian. He worked as a writer and editor for The Christian Science Monitor and then for The Wall Street Journal in the 1990s. Since then, he has been the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributor to The Washington Post. He has also written for numerous publications such as The Weekly Standard, the Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times, and he has authored books of military history. In 2018, Boot published The Road Not Taken, a biography of Edward Lansdale, and The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right, which details Boot's "ideological journey from a 'movement' conservative to a man without a party", in the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Eliot Asher Cohen is an American political scientist. He was a counselor in the United States Department of State under Condoleezza Rice from 2007 to 2009. In 2019, Cohen was named the 9th Dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, succeeding Vali Nasr. Before his time as dean, he directed the Strategic Studies Program at SAIS. Cohen "is one of the few teachers in the American academy to treat military history as a serious field", according to international law scholar Ruth Wedgwood. Cohen is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He is also, with Eric Edelman, a co-host of the Shield of the Republic podcast, published by The Bulwark.
Donald John Trump is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Peter Lampert Bergen is a British and American-based United States journalist, author, and producer who is CNN's national security analyst, a vice president at New America, a professor at Arizona State University, and the host of the Audible podcast In the Room with Peter Bergen.
Donald John Trump Jr. is an American businessman, former television presenter, political activist, and author. He is the eldest child of former U.S. President Donald Trump and his first wife Ivana Trump.
Robert Charles O'Brien Jr. is an American attorney who served as the twenty-seventh United States national security advisor from 2019 to 2021. He was the fourth and final person to hold the position during the presidency of Donald Trump. He is currently the chairman of the American Global Strategies firm advising companies on international politics, the U.S. government, and crisis management.
Derek Chollet is an American foreign policy advisor and author currently serving as the counselor of the United States Department of State. Previously, Chollet was the executive vice president for security and defense policy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. From 2012 to 2015, Chollet was Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, where he managed U.S. defense policy involving Europe, NATO, the Middle East, Africa, and the Western Hemisphere for Secretaries of Defense Leon Panetta and Chuck Hagel.
Maggie Lindsy Haberman is an American journalist, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and a political analyst for CNN. She previously worked as a political reporter for the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and Politico. She wrote about Donald Trump for those publications and rose to prominence covering his campaign, presidency, and post-presidency for the Times. In 2022, she published the best-selling book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.
This bibliography of Donald Trump is a list of written and published works, by and about Donald Trump. Due to the sheer volume of books about Trump, the titles listed here are limited to non-fiction books about Trump or his presidency, published by notable authors and scholars. Tertiary sources, satire, and self-published books are excluded.
Donald Trump's tenure as the 45th president of the United States began with his inauguration on January 20, 2017, and ended on January 20, 2021. Trump, a Republican from New York City, took office following his Electoral College victory over Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, in which he lost the popular vote to Clinton by nearly three million votes. Upon his inauguration, he became the first president in American history without prior public office or military background. Trump made an unprecedented number of false or misleading statements during his campaign and presidency. His presidency ended following his defeat in the 2020 presidential election to former Democratic vice president Joe Biden, after one term in office.
The Steele dossier, also known as the Trump–Russia dossier, is a controversial political opposition research report compiled by Christopher Steele that was published without permission as an unfinished 35-page compilation of "unverified, and potentially unverifiable" raw intelligence reports—"not established facts, but a starting point for further investigation". It was written from June to December 2016 and contains allegations of misconduct, conspiracy, and cooperation between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and the government of Russia prior to and during the 2016 election campaign. Several key allegations made in June 2016 about the Russian government's efforts to get Trump elected were later described as "prescient" because they were corroborated six months later in the January 2017 report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Mueller Report, namely that Vladimir Putin favored Trump over Hillary Clinton; that he personally ordered an "influence campaign" to harm Clinton's campaign and to "undermine public faith in the US democratic process"; that he ordered cyberattacks on both parties; and that many Trump campaign officials and associates had numerous secretive contacts with Russian officials and agents.
America First refers to an isolationist policy stance in the United States that generally emphasizes American exceptionalism, non-interventionism, and American nationalism. The term was coined by President Woodrow Wilson in his 1916 campaign that pledged to keep America neutral in World War I. A more isolationist approach gained prominence in the interwar period (1918–1939); it was also advocated by the America First Committee, a non-interventionist pressure group against U.S. entry into World War II.
Ezra Cohen, also known as Ezra Cohen-Watnick, is an American intelligence official who served as the acting under secretary of defense for intelligence during the Trump Administration. He previously served as the acting assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, national security adviser to the United States attorney general and as a former senior director for intelligence programs for the United States National Security Council (NSC).
This is a timeline of events related to Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.
George Demetrios Papadopoulos is an author and former member of the foreign policy advisory panel to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. On October 5, 2017, Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to a felony charge of making false statements to FBI agents about the timing and the possible significance of his contacts in 2016 relating to U.S.–Russia relations and the Trump presidential campaign. In 2018, he served twelve days in federal prison, then was placed on a 12-month supervised release. During his supervised release from prison, he participated in the filming of a still-unreleased docuseries. In March 2019, Papadopoulos released his book, Deep State Target: How I Got Caught in the Crosshairs of the Plot to Bring Down President Trump. He was pardoned by Trump in December 2020.
Trump derangement syndrome (TDS) is a pejorative term, usually for criticism or negative reactions to former United States president Donald Trump that are perceived to be irrational and to have little regard towards Trump's actual policy positions, or actions undertaken by his administration. The term has mainly been used by Trump supporters to discredit criticism of him, as a way of reframing the discussion by suggesting that his opponents are incapable of accurately perceiving the world. Journalists have used the term to call for restraint when judging Trump's statements and actions.
Fear: Trump in the White House is a non-fiction 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.
During and after his term as President of the United States, Donald Trump made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims. The Washington Post's fact-checkers documented 30,573 false or misleading claims during his presidential term, an average of about 21 per day. The Toronto Star tallied 5,276 false claims from January 2017 to June 2019, an average of 6.1 per day. Commentators and fact-checkers have described the scale of Trump's mendacity as "unprecedented" in American politics, and the consistency of falsehoods a distinctive part of his business and political identities. Scholarly analysis of Trump's tweets found "significant evidence" of an intent to deceive.
The net worth of Donald Trump is not publicly known. Forbes has estimated his wealth for decades and estimates it at $2.6 billion as of 2024, with Trump making much higher claims. Trump received gifts, loans, and inheritance from his father. His primary business has been real estate ventures, including hotels, casinos, and golf courses. He also made money from Trump-branded products including neckties and steaks. Money received through political fundraisers is used to pay for guest stays at properties owned by the Trump Organization and to pay his and his allies' lawyers.
From 2017 through 2021, Donald Trump was the 45th president of the United States; he is the only American president to have no political or military service prior to his presidency, as well as the first to be charged with a felony after leaving office. He is regarded by historians as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history.