There’s no denying at this point that Donald Trump has had an absolutely extraordinary number of books penned about him by ex-officials, aides, and insiders in the year and a half or so since he lost his second run at the US presidency and was officially evicted from the White House. There’s also no denying that next to none of them have been flattering of the former president — a rather stark contrast to all of the one-term, twice-impeached former president’s predecessors, who have generally been doted on by the former insiders once their terms were complete, and former aides and officials pen books telling of their successes under the various administrations.
But it seems all Trump has seen is criticism, vitriol, and widespread exposure of his scandals, outbursts, and crimes — all hailing from the very same people he once considered his own.
Again, we knew there were a lot of these. To be frank, it seems like every time you turn around these days, there’s yet another tell-all hitting shelves and making waves that’s highly critical of Donald Trump in some way or another, based on their individual experiences with the 45th president of the United States. But according to a bombshell analysis, it’s not simply a lot of former officials and insiders that are turning against Donald Trump — it is an unprecedented, record-breaking number of them.
MSNBC Maddowblog’s Steve Benen takes notice of this growing trend among former Trump officials in a recent analysis column.
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The most recent of Donald Trump’s former people to make waves with a tell-all full of criticism and bombshell revelations was former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, whose new book, A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times, has recently hit the shelves. But, much like all the rest of these tell-alls, the excerpts ahead of the book’s official release were plentiful, and they were damning — telling of outrageous and downright shocking things Esper witnessed the then-president do and demand during his short year as the department head.
This included an unhinged meeting, during which Donald Trump allegedly screamed down his own vice president and various other officials when military officials refused his suggestion to shoot protesters “in the leg or something” in the wake of George Floyd’s heinous murder, and his unhinged idea to launch a missile strike against Mexico at our southern border and just simply pretend like the US wasn’t actually responsible for it.
In his analysis, Benen points out what’s quickly becoming glaringly obvious — no one who has lived through several presidential administrations has seen so many former officials and insiders so viciously turn on the person who quite literally appointed them to their cabinet positions.
“Indeed, it’s an extraordinary list,” Benen writes.
Benen notes that Esper was one of those who were “reticent” to go public with their story while Donald Trump was still in office, and bore the powers of the presidency, but writes “Former Attorney General William Barr, for example, recently rejected the idea of Trump returning to the White House. Former White House National Security Advisor John Bolton hasn’t just denounced Trump, last week Bolton agreed that the former president as a national security threat to the United States.”
“John Kelly, meanwhile, served as Trump’s White House chief of staff for 17 months, working side-by-side with the then-president every day in the West Wing. Now, Kelly can barely contain his apparent contempt for Trump,” he goes on to add in his analysis.
Then you add that to the fact that “former Defense Secretary James Mattis, wrote a rather extraordinary rebuke of Trump, condemning the president for being divisive, immature, and cavalier about abusing his powers.” He also made note of former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson who described Donald Trump as “pretty undisciplined,” a man who “doesn’t like to read” and who repeatedly asked him to blatantly break the law.
Benen actually constructed a partial list of former Trump administration officials, staffers, and insiders who have completely turned on the former guy and exposed their truths from inside the Trump White House, writing, “Many of these former officials had a front-row seat, watching how the Republican tried to lead, how he processed information, how he evaluated evidence, and how he made decisions. And now that these men and women have left the administration and had an opportunity to reflect on their time on Team Trump, they’re eager to let the public know that Trump is unsuited for national leadership.”
“History offers plenty of examples of presidents who’ve clashed with one aide or another, but we’ve never seen anything like this,” the analysis concludes.
It’s clear at this point, more than ever, that Trump is not the beloved, revered, respected man he tried to force people to see him as. He’s just a washed-up reality TV “star” with a dictator fetish who wasted all his daddy’s money.
Featured image via Political Tribune Gallery
