A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America
by Philip Rucker
View on GoodreadsPhilip Rucker and Carol Leonnig's first Trump book — a comprehensive Washington Post account of the Trump presidency's first three years, organized around the administration's stress-testing of constitutional and institutional norms.
Core ideas
- The Mueller probe response, the Ukraine extortion attempt, the Helsinki press conference, and the family-separation policy are treated as continuous behavior, not isolated scandals — the book's central interpretive move.
- The book's reporting access is unusually deep — named sourcing inside the administration, contemporaneous notes, and cross-corroboration across dozens of interviews; reads as documentary rather than dramatic.
- The portrait of Trump's interactions with senior military and intelligence officials — Mattis, Coats, Pompeo, Bolton — is particularly damning because it's almost entirely from the principals.
Published2020
Pages480
ISBN9781984877505
ReadJul 2024
