Unbelievable audiobook

Prologue: Trump Victory Party New York Hilton Midtown 10:59 P.M. Election DayI’m about to throw up. I so wish she had said “I think I’m gonna barf,” but we can’t have everything. NBC reporter Katherine Bear “Katy” Tur was not alone in feeling that way. In fact, a wave of nausea has been crisscrossing the nation ever since November 8, 2016, a date that will live in infamy, trapped in a seemingly endless back and forth sloshing. Tur had more reason for gastrointestinal distress than most. She had been assigned to the Trump campaign for the duration of the seemingly endless electioneering season. Seeing this guy elected president of the United States would turn your stomach too if you had been seeing what he was really like for over 500 days.Image by Sasha Arutyunova for the NY TimesWe want our campaign-book reportage to show us something we have not seen before. Of course, it was not always the case that every microsecond of a campaign was undertaken under klieg lights. So, really, what’s left, but the reporter’s experience, things that are not told in her thousands (more than 3800 through the campaign) of on-air reports. What can we learn from Tur’s book that we did not know before? What can we learn about campaigning that did not make the broadcast? What can we learn about the personalities involved, the candidate, the candidate’s team, the candidate’s followers that occur off camera?Tur interviewing you-know-who in July 2015 – image from MSNBCWhat stands out most, chillingly, is the atmosphere of intolerance and menace promoted by candidate Swamp Thing, toward foreigners, democrats, minorities, but perhaps most importantly, toward the press. Politicians have often, even usually, taken umbrage at the reporters writing about or broadcasting stories about their less-than-perfect aspects. What is unusual is having a candidate who encourages his people to go after them. What is unusual is having a candidate who lies so relentlessly that he attempts to deny reality entirely, a candidate who, by proclaiming every day that reporters are nothing but merchants of fake news, is attempting to delegitimize the major media of our nation from their role as the fourth estate, that entity charged with holding public feet to the fire of revelation. If there is no one left to tell the truth about him, and fewer and fewer consumers of news who accept what the media reports as truth, Trump can go about his vast array of crimes with no fear of being held accountable. Campaign reporters were held in pens at Trump rallies. Trump went out of his way to point them out to his followers, calling them names, accusing them of lying about him, tacitly encouraging his followers to scream at, intimidate, and threaten them. “Look back there! ‘Little Katy,’ she’s back there. She’s such a liar, what a little liar she is!” She was often singled out as the focus of his rage against the media. It was not out of character. Tur notes the growing aura of menace at his rallies, as Trump repeatedly encouraged his followers to brutalize protesters. Katy knew she would have to endure. “I don’t know why he did it,” she said, shrugging. “But I will say this: I know that had I exhibited any sign that I was intimidated or scared of him, he would have rolled over me.” It seems likely that Trump focusing so much on Tur may have been a manifestation of his epic misogyny. KT at NH rally on election eve – Getty Image Tur contends that the rally attendees who screamed “Cunt” at her would never think of doing that anywhere else. She made an effort to talk with Trump supporters. She thinks they are probably decent people who are frustrated at the excesses of political correctness on the one hand and their economic immobility, or even descent on the other. It is not a view I share. What is not really surprising is that there are so many in our country who care so little for facts, and so much for their biases, that they are perfectly fine with Swamp Thing’s relentless lies and bigotry. While frustrations are real, unfairness rampant, and maybe getting worse, what has been let loose is not a rally-sparked mob mentality. I expect the mob is real and more permanent than Kur believes. It was on display in full force in Charlottesville. This IS the dark undercurrent in American society, the undercurrent that thought slavery was fine and dandy, the undercurrent that was cool with Jim Crow, the undercurrent that thought the guys in white sheets were doing the right thing, and that certain people should know their place, the undercurrent that thought Tail-Gunner Joe was the cat’s meow, and that a woman’s place was in the kitchen, the undercurrent that listen to the know-nothing, paranoid demagoguery spewed by the likes of Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, and Fox News as if it is revealed wisdom. Not all Trump supporters are climate deniers, but all climate deniers are Trump supporters. Not all Trump supporters are nativists, but all nativists are Trump supporters. Not all Trump supporters are white supremacists, but all white supremacists are Trump supporters. Not all Trump supporters are fascists, but all fascists are Trump supporters. And it is these darker portions of Trump’s supporters who seem to have been heavily represented at Trump rallies. Having so public an approving mouthpiece as Swamp Thing crying havoc gave them a feeling of license to let slip the dogs of hatred, and now they roam in rabid packs.In the field – image from peanutchuck.comIf you want to know what it might have been like on the campaign trail with Mussolini, Hitler, or any of the many other demagogues who have fouled and others who continue to pollute our planet, Tur give you a pretty good taste. She offers first hand, up close and personal witness to mass hatred, stoked by a master demagogue, as monumentally skilled in the arts of theater as he is amazingly incapable in the business of governing. image from MarieClaire.com – shot by Rebecca GreenfieldTur portrays a Bizarro world, in which a rope line of Trump lackeys works to ramp up reporters’ stress by accusing them pre-emptively of bias in order to gain the best possible coverage. This appears to be SOP for Trump, always pressuring the ump to try to gain a sympathetic call some time later in the game. She also lets us in on how disorganized the Trumpzis were, constantly being off message when talking with the press. And it would have been tough to remain on message in any case as Swamp Thing had a habit of contradicting himself only constantly. Another continuing point in the book is the numbing endurance of day after day, hell, minute after minute non-stop, sociopathic dishonesty. It has got to be tough to keep on message, though, with having to remember the lies du jour. We get a very clear sense that Swamp Thing was not really in it to win it. This was the presumption of most of the world at the beginning of his campaign, that he was in the race as a publicity stunt on steroids. That would go a long way toward explaining why he continued trying to make real estate deals in Russia all the way through the campaign. Like Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom in The Producers, he figured he could get away with dirty dealings, in this case playing footsie with the primary enemy of the United States, because he did not expect to win. He intended to produce a flop. Image from The New York Daily NewsThe tweeting was a whole other thing. Never before had there been a candidate whose favorite means of communication was the tweet. He was, and remains, compulsive about his tweeting, often tweeting dramatic pronouncements, accusations, and lies at all hours of the day. This impacted campaign reporters, who used to be able to get a break from campaign events. Not anymore.Tur gives you a real sense of what it means to be a campaign reporter, the late nights, early mornings, constant interruptions, competition from other news pros, demands from the bosses, more demands from the bosses, even more demands from the bosses, the challenge of getting to a plane in the middle of a snow hazard to get to a campaign stop half a country away, with single-digit minutes so spare, the need to find clothing and coiffure presentable on air when you are a mess, the need to function at peak efficiency and presentation when you have had next to no sleep for what feels like a lifetime. She also talks about the toll this assignment had on her personal life. Illuminating stuff for those of us on the other side of the TV screen.December 2015 – image from Peanutchuck.comAnd then there are the personal dealings with Swamp Thing and his minions. She reports on the schizoid way Trump treated her, publicly saying she was a great reporter one day and the next calling her out to his brownshirts at a rally, by name, as unfair, third rate, and worse, to the point that NBC had to provide her with a security detail. It is a good thing that she has, as she calls it, the hide of a rhinoceros. But she also tells of her one-on-one interactions with him, offering passing charm one minute, but angling, always, always angling for favorable coverage. You really get a sense of how creepy a guy he is in person. Tur stays mostly away from Trump’s staff, focusing her recollections on those she had with the candidate himself. Although she does report on a senior, married, Trump campaign staffer who asked her where he could meet single 30-something women. Sadly, no name is revealed. She is too much of a pro to come right out and say that Donald Trump is a world-class asshole, maybe one of the biggest assholes who has ever lived, an amoral monster who puts not only all the people around him but the very planet at risk in service of his tiny mind and incredibly inflated ego, but we get the picture. She is a master of showing without telling. It comes across pretty clearly here that Swamp Thing is not exactly presidential material. image from Marie Claire – shot by Anthony TerrellThe book alternates between election night at Trump’s victory party and Tur’s tale of covering the campaign, from being assigned in May 2015. In addition to telling of her reporting experiences, she offers autobiographical details that include some pretty lively material. Mom and Dad were news people, had the first private helicopter covering breaking news in Los Angeles, making a living and a name for themselves breaking new reportorial ground. If you are thinking OJ, yep, they were right on that. The Rodney King riots? Yep again. That was them shooting the beating of Reginald Denny. It is fascinating material. And certainly argues that having a nose for news may have a genetic element. If you are looking for a kiss and tell, dirt-driven spill-all, with juicy scandals aplenty and dark secrets revealed, you will have to try another network. Unbelievable does not offer the sort of anarchic LOL reportage of Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ‘72. It is not one of those reportorial coups d’etat that will revolutionize how we perceive campaigns, like Theodore White’s The Making of the President. But it certainly does offer us insight into what it means to be a reporter in this new 24/7/365 age of campaign coverage. It gives us a you-are-there feel for what may be the most important campaign of the twenty-first century, an eyewitness account of a particularly dark turn taken in American politics, a sea change in what is considered decent in public discourse and behavior, and a close, alarming look at the man now twitching in the oval office. Hopefully we can learn from what has been going on, and what Tur has seen, and find ways to stem the rise of know-nothing absolutism. But the coming years should be good ones for bucket makers because there are millions of us who, faced with the horrors of a Donald Trump presidency, will find ourselves keeping one near at hand for those all too frequent moments when we announce to the world, “I think I’m gonna barf.”Election night. …don’t misunderstand me. The Hilton is nice. It’s been host to many grand events. But it can’t hold the kind of ten-thousand-person rallies that Trump has built his campaign around…There isn’t even free booze. The bar is charging seven dollars for sodas, eleven dollars for beers, and thirteen dollars or mixed drinks. Trumps advisers claim that Trump is just superstitious. He doesn’t want to jinx himself with a big show event. Cynics—or, as Trump calls them, “haters”—say he’s just cheap. About that cash bar: Red State calls it an “abomination.” GQ rates it pure Trump. “Let history show that up until the moment his fate became official, Donald Trump remained true to himself, a serial grafter and shameless carnival barker who let nothing come between him and the opportunity to get his grubby hands on a few more dollars.” Review first posted – September 14, 2017Publication-----Hardcover - September 12, 2017-----Trade Paperback - August 28, 2018(view spoiler)[I felt this needed to be tucked safely under a spoiler tag, because I have an uncontrollable need. There are some sentences that I feel compelled to write, but which I am ashamed to own. So here goes, the ending to the review my inner child really, really wanted to use. I am very much looking forward to future such reporting from this outstanding journalist, because, of course, one good Tur deserves another.Ok, there. I’ve done it. Don’t judge me. I have a problem and I accept that. (hide spoiler)]=============================EXTRA STUFFTur’s Twitter feed Trump’s response to the release of Unbelievable was boilerplate.Fascinating to watch people writing books and major articles about me and yet they know nothing about me & have zero access. #FAKE NEWS!TypicalSeptember 9, 2017 - A thoughtful, if frightening, opinion piece by Tur - The Trump Fever Never Breaks Articles worth checking out-----Boston Globe - 7 Books on Presidential Campaigns – by Katharine Whittemore-----GQ - Hack: Confessions of a Presidential Campaign Reporter - by Michael Hastings-----Rollingstone - Matt Taibbi’s New Book: ‘Insane Clown President’ - an excerpt-----NY Times - Old Page Turners for a New Presidential Campaign – by John Williams-----Politico - The Book that Changed Campaigns Forever – by Scott PorchExcerpts-----MSNBC-----MarieClaire - My Crazy Year With TrumpInterviews-----Wonderful interview with Rachel Maddow-----Brian Williams talks with Tur on November 2, 2016 about Trump taunting her by name at a rallyOther items of interest-----Madeline Albright’s book, Fascism, is definitely worth a look -----March 14, 2019 - NY Times - Donald Trump’s Bikers Want to Kick Protester Ass - building a brownshirt militia - this is really bad -----But Lawrence O'Brien Lawrence O'Brien thinks it's just gas. Sure hope he's right. November 9, 2017 - Unbelievable is among the nominees for Amazon's book of the year - HistoryPS - In the book, Tur tells of a Trump rally at the Mohegan Sun arena in Wilkes Barre, PA. It was the usual rabid event. Following which, Tur and her crew went to the mall across the road, stopping at a Panera for a quick bite. The vibe from the rally followed them into the restaurant. They felt so uncomfortable there that they left in a hurry. One might even say they fled, concerned about physical harm. That location was one of the casualties when an EF2 tornado touched down here on June 14, 2018.["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>

If you paid attention to the 2016 campaign, you had to notice Katy Tur. She was a veteran—but virtually unknown—NBC correspondent assigned to the Trump campaign in its early days when his presidential run was considered to be little more than a joke. Tur’s fame grew as Trump gained momentum, and the Donald’s angry yet weirdly flirtatious treatment of her—as she sat in the centrally located “pen” which housed the press at every rally—soon turned her into the embodiment of “fake news” itself and a focus for the attention of Trump’s increasingly hostile crowd.I followed her closely from the first, pleased with her luck in drawing the “Trump” card, impressed by her pluck and tenacity, and at times—when the boos of at a rally grew in intensity—genuinely afraid for her physical safety. This was the 2016 campaign memoir I wanted most to read, and I was in no way disappointed.Tur is a savvy, perceptive observer, shrewd enough to know her limitations. She doesn’t reflect at length on the significance of the campaign, but instead uses an unadorned informal style to tell us the “Hollywood” version of the story: how a plucky thirty-something bachelor girl reporter found fame and fortune covering the dark horse—and eventual winner--of a volatile presidential campaign. Tur never loses sight of this basic story, but she finds opportunities along the way to make scores of shrewd observations.Her writing is sharp, filled with just the right details, whether she is describing her break-up with her Paris boyfriend Benoit (“I told him I was too old to fight on the street”), her wardrobe (“I bought the same J. Crew sweater in fifteen different colors...along with a rainbow collection of scarves"), or the deterioration of her early sartorial habits under the pressures of the campaign (“We’ve all started dressing like the Saturdays we rarely get off anymore.”) The structure of the book alternates between a chronological account of the Trump campaign as she experienced it and close-up vignettes of election day events and reflections. This structures allow Tur to give her book depth and perspective without ever abandoning her casual, colloquial style.I’ll end with two examples of that style. First, her meeting with Trump before her first sit-down interview: Certain people have a presence that’s bigger than their physical size, an ability to ripple the air. They fill the room with significance, or at least with a perfect imitation of it. Trump has that kind of presence.And he’s orange. There’s no other way to describe him. He’s the color of orange marmalade, perhaps a shade darker, like marmalade on toast…He also doesn’t say hello, exactly, but sort of sings it. He smiles and squints, and the sound seems to slip out the side of his face. And her reflection at a campaign event in the Mar-a-lago ballroom: It’s actually kind of impressive...But as I watch all this money walk around, as I survey a room of people nipped, tucked, and sucked to their ideal of perfection, I can’t help thinking of Trump’s rally crowds. The people in this room are decidedly not the people at his rallies. The rally people arrive in denim, flannel, and thick-soled boots. They wait for hours, eat whole pizzas in the security line, tattoo Trump’s face on their forearms.The people in this ballroom are not the subject of Trump’s speeches either. Their industries aren’t dead. Their jobs didn’t disappear overseas. More likely, these are the people shipping the jobs overseas. These are the people slashing budgets and enhancing their own bottom line while the bottom falls out of everyone else’s lives.What would the people at Trump’s rallies say about the people at his victory parties? What would the folks who are fanning Trump's political flames think of all these gilded types trying to warm themselves by Trump’s new fire?

We can tell the truth all day, but it’s pointless if no one believes us.Katy Tur, p199*Trump is pointing a finger back to me on the press riser. “There’s something happening. They’re not reporting it.” (p272)At this point in the book a bell sounded in my head. Bob Dylan 1965:Well something is happe

Politics aside (if anyone is able to do that these days), I thought these was a really interesting view into political reporting, and how Tur and her peers survived on the endless and exhausting 2016 election campaign. I listened to the audio version, and Tur did an excellent job straddling the line between her news anchor voice and imbuing it with personality and inflection. Were parts of this personally difficult for me to listen to? Yep. But I still enjoyed the hell out of it, in that can't-stop-listening way that engaging books have. Her writing was strong, and even when I knew the outcome of the final chapter, she had me along for the ride the entire time.

"That's why I'm sitting in an office in 30 Rock, thinking about the old RCA building and waiting for Donald Trump to call me. Apparently tweeting that I should be fired, calling me a liar in front of millions of people on national television, and receiving death threats from his followers shortly thereafter was not enough punishment. He wants penance. He wants groveling. He wants to hear those two precious words. And until he gets them, he says, no NBC News. No Meet the Press. No Today Show. No Nightly News. The phone rings. "Katy, it's Donald."Unbelievable by Katy Tur is a book that really takes the meaning of 'truth being stranger than fiction' to new heights. Her story covering the dizzying highs and lows (mostly lows) surrounding the coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump is a summation of the quagmire of contemporary American political thought. Here we witness the perverse political tribalism, the name-calling, the feverous infection of it all, and frankly is it quite unbelievable to witness.I decided to read this book for several reasons. MSNBC is the network I generally watch to get my political fix, mostly for Brian Williams' show, but occasionally I have free time to watch the hour Tur hosts, and I have general respect for her as a journalist and person. This book provides an excellence chance to hear her personal feelings during those moments with the ongoing hostile relationship Trump infringed on her during the campaign. Chapters alternate between moments leading up to election day and the events of election day themselves. Reading those critical moments brought me back to when I was witnessing them for myself, jaw-dropped and perplexed beyond all meaning. Her interactions with Trump supporters is one of the foundations of the book, and the insights Tur notices were, for the most part, objectively correct, even among a lot of animalistic behaviour on their part. "Hillary Clinton recently called Trump's supporters a basket of deplorables, and while some might be easy to single out like that, most aren't. They're your taxi driver, your fireman, and your supermarket cashier....You would never know that they're Trump supporters, quote unquote deplorables."Tur's book, while important in highlighting the dangerous Joseph Stalin-like position Trump has taken with the mainstream media also showcases something else: just how modern 24 hour news cycles can be described as sociologically and psychologically poisonous to the psyche of their viewers. It's hard to be continuously blasted with information minute by minute that offers no true resolutions to the conflicts being covered. The infamous tweets coming from Trump are a grand example of this, and Tur (along with us all) feel instantly overwhelmed with how to process all this information. This study would make for an interesting sociology thesis.Any supporters of Trump will find this book undesirable in content. Some might be turned off by her insights into the difficulty of female corespondents with wardrobes, or her cliche dreams to be living back in London and seeing her then French boyfriend. However the content here speaks for itself, and in writing, Tur's story comes off as uniquely all-American in struggle and purpose.Rating 4.5/5

No one brings the crazy quite like Donald J. Trump. Now imagine being assigned the unenviable task of objectively explaining his elliptical frothings to the vast NBC/MSNBC audience. For more than five hundred days, that was journalist Katy Tur’s job. Tur’s new book Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History sheds light on the difficulties involved in reporting from a campaign so light on policy and heavy on personality. The book’s episodes bring back the “shock-a-day” nature of the Trump campaign that hit new low after new low. Through it all, Tur maintains her professionalism as she engages with Trump and his staff, trying to discover substance in all the blather, even as Trump stirs up his crowds against the media in general and frighteningly singles out Tur at his rallies, resulting in NBC providing a security detail for her.Unbelievable is a thoroughly engaging look at how Trump operates and the journalistic challenges involved in trying to extract anything meaningful from his communication and behavior.

Well, I’ve learned that Trump insists that he has “the world’s greatest memory,” but his vision of the future go him this far. I’ve learned that Trump has his own version of reality, which is a polite way of saying he can’t always be trusted. He also brings his own sense of political decorum. I’ve heard him insult a war hero, brag about grabbing women by the pussy, denigrate the judicial system, demonize immigrants, fight with the pope, doubt the democratic process, advocate torture and war crimes, tout the size of his junk in a presidential debate, trash the media, and indirectly endanger my life.I’ve learned that none of this matters to an Electoral College majority of American voters. They’ve decided that this menacing, indecent, post-truth landscape is where they want to live for the next four years. Look, I get it. You can’t tell a joke without worrying you’ll lose your job. Your twenty-something (sic) can’t find work. Your ton is boarded up. Patriotism gets called racism. Your food is full of chemicals. Your body is full of pills. You call tech support and reach someone in India. Bills are spiking but your paycheck is not. And you can’t send your kid to school with peanut butter. On top of it all, no one seems to care. You feel like you’re screaming at the top of your lungs in a room full of people wearing earplugs. I think that this is a major miscalculation on the part of the Democrats. They assumed that Trump voters would care about Pussygate. That they valued political correctness or cultural sensitivity.. In essence, they somehow believed that Republicans shared their values and/or would be outraged by things that outraged them. A man in the crowd yell out that Trump should buy NBC.Trump doesn’t disagree, and adds that he could “fix NBC.” “I know what sells.” In all the things I’ve read about Trump, I think this sums up his true strength. For all his faults, he does indeed knows what sells. Make America Great Again is such an ingenious slogan. It says and means nothing, yet can and does mean something to everyone. Every great add campaign understands that you don’t sell products by offering spreadsheets and facts. You sell your product by using emotion. You sell a feeling, an idea, a vision. Yet the left is constantly scratching their head when their fact checks or moral outrage don’t register with the loyal Trump supporter. In fact, it seems that of those people who supported Trump but who are not happy with his performance, most are not concerned about his false claims or inconsistent behaviors. Most people just don’t like his Twitter habit and his negative, punch-em in the face style. No one she (Ali Vitali) spoke to is disturbed by the Muslim ban.“It’s a wise decision,” said one man waiting in line.Another man, a soldier who had done tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, went further. To continue to allow Muslims to come in would be a “kick in the face to every veteran,” he said. The only thing better than a ban would be mass deportations, he said. “Ship them all back.” There is a lot here. Immigration is a complicated issue. The immigration of Muslims, or potentially hostile parties, is a whole other story. I’m liberal or at least liberal leaning, but the idea that because this country was built on immigrants that we should welcome anyone who wants to come is naïve. Unfortunately, immigration has been politicized and turned into a polarizing hot-button topic to sway voters. His supporters tell us they like this (referring to Muslim ban). They believe it is a wise decision. And they believe Donald Trump is going to keep them safe. Why in our latest MSNBC poll, we found that 60 percent of Republican voters say that one of their biggest concerns is being the victim of a terror attack.But it works for him (referring to Trump’s rhetoric). Everything he says falls into one of two categories. If it’s good it’s “we.” If it’s bad it’s “they.” “We” are going to have o much winning. “they” are going to hate it. His supporters feel that he is fighting for them. They identify with him. They can relate. “He talks just like us," supporters say over and over again. He’s the rich guy they would be if they were rich. And he knows it. One of Trump’s worst traits is his divisive rhetoric. He uses it as a distraction, but also as a means to strengthen the commitment of his base. It resonates with our tribal roots and tendencies. “He uses the reporters to recreate razzle dazzle: there are five stories in the morning papers leading into 11 minutes of television at night,” Breslin wrote.The financial people, who lead such dreary lives, believe what they read and see on television. Trump is larger than life. No, not Trump. Don’t use that name. It’s Donald! He cannot lose…Trump will call and announce his rise. The suckers will write about a heroic indomitable spirit. Redemption makes and even better tale. O many bankers will grab his arm the sleeve will rip. All Trump has to do is stick to the rules on which he was raised by his father in the County of Queens:Never use your own money. Steal a good idea and say it’s your own. Do anything to get publicity. Remember that everybody can be bought. I remember reading that once upon a time Trump would call magazines and plant stories about himself. The old no publicity is bad publicity. But it’s not clear what he’s talking about when he says, ‘Everybody goes against us—down the tubes.”Who would go down the tubes? Critics? The opposition party? Non-Trump voters? And who would send them down the tubes? Who is this us? Trump staggers? A legion of yes-men? What does he mean by down the tubes? Professional failure? National expulsion? Public embarrassment? Death?Trump would deny the menace in these metaphors, but there’s a calculated vagueness to them. Some supporters think he’s joking, while others feel he’s laying the foundation for a militia they’d like to join.He set the tone in his announcement speech warning that America was getting “weaker.” Now his message is all about America getting tougher and stronger and, in winks and nods, more violent and unforgiving, too. I have a patient whose daughter attended a Trump rally with a friend. She said it was terrifying. The crowds, encouraged by Trump, feel emboldened. We all know what people, even good people, are capable of when they get caught up in a group dynamic. Trump is a charismatic leader who says that we need to come together in one breath and then uses charged and divisive language in the next. All the time feigning innocence. People seem drawn to Trump’s rallies in the same way that they are drawn to a professional wrestling match and as with a professional wrestling match, they seem divided between people who believe all they see and hear, and those who know it’s partially a performance. The scariest thing about being a Trump rally is that you don’t know who believes it and who doesn’t. The people in this ballroom are not the subject of Trump’s speeches, either. Their industries aren’t dead. Their jobs didn’t disappear overseas. More likely, these are the people shipping the jobs overseas. These are the people slashing budgets and enhancing their own bottom line while the bottom falls out of everyone else’s lives. What would the people at Trump’s rallies say about people at his victory parties? Many people have suggested that part of Trump’s problem is that he is a wanna-be. More than anything he respects wealth and prestige, but despite his claims (often exaggerated) of wealth, over the years he has been snubbed by the elite. In their circle, he's a joke...or at least he was. Now, that story is probably apocryphal. But it shows the kind of love that’s out there for some politicians, and Trump is, for a good portion of America, a politician who inspires that kind of love. “Nothing short of Rump shooting my daughter in the street and my grandchildren” can dissuade me form voting for Trump, a woman told Ashley Parker of the New York Times. Jones’ followers loved him, too. Hitler didn’t perpetuate the Holocaust without the support of many. People who inspire this kind of devotion should scare us all. As I run through a mental list of questions for Trump, one comes to mind for rank-a-file Republicans. Why drop Trump now? Why is this (pussygate) the line for Republican Why not calling Mexicans rapists? Or fighting with the pope? Or racism toward a federal judge? Or the fraud lawsuits? Or the name-calling? Or the fearmongering? Or the xenophobia? Or the countless other degrading statements he’s, made about women, including his own wife? For god’s sake, why not the half decade of birtherism? One thing I’ve learned from my own observations as well as things that I’ve read is that people are capable of performing some pretty impressive mental gymnastics. Every day on the campaign trail Trump’s actions test the definition of normal. He calls for jailing his opponent. He openly admonishes sitting general. He singles out minority groups for blanket condemnation. He goes after the spouses of his rivals. He questions the integrity of the election itself. He is endlessly hostile toward the media. All of this Trump does so often that it’s a struggle to remember what’s old news, by the standard of his behavior, and that is big news, by the standard of history. The book I’m reading now further explores Trumps mental health. Will have more to thoughts on this later. I am desperate to talk about his voters. I want to do a piece explaining that they don’t care about the headlines. Either they aren’t paying attention to them or they are discounting whatever they hear. The Access Hollywood tape, the women accusing Trump of sexual assault, the dark premonitions and lingering grudges—out her, in Trump’s American, none of it is as big a deal as it is in New York or Washington. A book I read recently called Denying to the Grave addresses the problem we face when trying to change people’s minds using facts. Part of the problem is that we make arguments that appeal to us. But that’s the problem. You’re not trying to convince someone who thinks like you. You’re trying to appeal to somebody who has come to a different conclusion. We often think the problem is that these people just don’t understand the facts, but the reality is that often times they’ve simply come to a different conclusion based on their values and biases. Then he (Trump) admitted something usually left unsaid, something expressing in wrinkles, dark circles, and gray spots. “This is more work than in my previous life,” Trump said. Yes, it’s hard being president. People aren’t usually surprised by that fact. Trump was. “I thought it would be easier,” he said. Well, I think this last quote says it all. I honestly don’t think Trump has a clue. I think he is a con man who doesn’t even try to hide that he’s a con man. He doesn’t lie. He speaks his mind. He isn’t sexist or racist, he simply has the courage to say things that we’ve all said when we thought no one was listening. Overall, Tur’s book does a decent job of offering insights garnered from close to two years of covering his campaign, though I could have done without some of the personal accounting. I also feel at times she hit us with the obvious, “Can you believe he just said that.” Interestingly, like Michael Wolff and others, she is capitalizing on the media buzz around Trump. Whatever her motives, her book is giving Donald the media attention he so desperately craves, for better or for worse, but also the kind of media attention that paved his way to the White House, whether we want to admit it or not. And hey…I bought the book. I bought several books. But just imagine…what would happen if suddenly the media just stopped reporting on Trump and all his craziness? With the cameras turned off, would he stop performing and would he slip into celebrity oblivion. If all Trump really has going for him is his celebrity, isn’t the media the one feeding the monster?Trump is not Hitler in that he lacks any real philosophical conviction. He’s a media whore. A narcissist and a bully. His sole driving force is a desire to be loved and admired. He is easily swayed and manipulated and is a reality TV star who doesn’t seem to grasp the import of his position. He’s a joke, and somehow America’s immediate future is his punchline. Politics aside, he has degraded and disgraced the highest office in this nation and has set a new tone that equates crassness with honesty and patriotism with nativism. This past year for many has felt like living in a cheesy reality TV show. I don’t care how good the stock market is doing. I think Trump has taken us to a very dark place, and I look forward to the day when his show finally gets canceled.