SINKING IN THE SWAMP

A dishy takedown of the mediocrities, charlatans, and grifters populating the corridors of power in D.C.

A trigger warning that there’s naughty language ahead: As Daily Beast investigative reporters Markay and Suebsaeng write, they wanted to call their book Another Shitstorm in Fucktown: The Donald J. Trump Odyssey. Though the powers that be at their agency and publisher said no—think of the Costco and Walmart sales forgone—the authors allow that “we thought it felt like the only title that fully captured the essence of what the Trump era was really like.” There are plenty of people in the capital who won’t talk to the duo: the lieutenants and foot soldiers who enable the current occupant of the White House, men and women whom they refer to as “Trumpworld’s Henry Hills.” The reference, of course, is to the Mafia hit man who served the Lucchese crime family and inspired the film Goodfellas. While the authors aver that their sights are on those loyalists, they can’t keep their eyes off the prize, Trump himself, with his addled visions of being beloved by the show business figures in whose ranks he thinks he belongs. There’s lots of gossipy stuff here that readers may not have found in other sources—e.g., that a game designer sued Trump for ripping off a Monopoly-ish board game or that Trump used to litter the floor of the Apprentice studio with sucked-on Tic Tacs for the sheer joy of knowing that some peon had to clean up after him. The big picture isn’t much different from books such as Bob Woodward’s Fear and David Cay Johnston’s It’s Even Worse Than You Think, but Markay and Suebsaeng are so breathless that it’s like reading Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon after a healthy diet of Peter Biskind and David Thomson.

Middling, but readers who can’t get enough dirt on Trump and associates will revel in it.