ALL OR NOTHING

Back for more.

Bad news is the best kind in the “inverted reality” of a Trump presidential campaign. In Wolff’s fourth book about Trump, his subject is mentally “scattered” but politically unkillable, only strengthened by his assorted legal problems. “If you refuse to accept your disgrace, it becomes righteousness,” Wolff writes. Indeed, Trump’s “delusion” that the 2020 election was rigged impels him onward—and upward. His campaign effectively starts in August 2022, when FBI agents seize classified documents from Trump’s Florida club, inspiring loyalists to donate $22 million. Subsequently indicted in four criminal cases, he’s soon up by 50 points in the GOP’s nomination contest. Remarkably, he succeeds “by making all prosecutors and judges his enemy,” Wolff writes. Wolff’s political analysis is fitfully insightful, but he’s mainly here for the gossip. Trump, he reports, suggested Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo for vice president; likened himself to Nelson Mandela; spread scurrilous rumors about Chuck Schumer and Michelle Obama; and wanted to sue Democrats to recover money he spent competing against a candidate—Joe Biden—who quit. Wolff’s anecdotes tend to rely on anonymous sources, so it’s impossible to judge their worth. Why did Trump win? In part because he has “bad lawyers.” They clog the courts with outrageous motions “that would embarrass respectable lawyers.” But Wolff’s most sardonic jab hits Trump’s opponent. After Biden’s confused debate performance, Wolff deadpans, Jill Biden arrives “to take her husband to hospice.” Improbably, a youngish Trump aide develops a “lovestruck adulation” for her boss, emerging as a major figure in the book. Wolff quotes at length from her cringey letters to Trump and mocks her in his strange closing sentence. Given Trump’s many powerful enablers, Wolff might’ve found a more worthy target.

A mordant, murkily sourced account of the 2024 election.