The Useful Idiot: How Donald Trump Killed the Republican Party with Racism and the Rest of Us with Coronavirus Paperback – September 4, 2020

if you just need a REMINDER of the grifting and moronic happenings of a presidency, this is one of the reads. if you want to understand the puppet nature of a powered position in american government, this is one of the reads. we all have differing opinions of everything but at some point you have to respect FACTS and not FAKE GASLIGHTING being thrown at you daily from what is supposed to be leadership of a government. a good read

This is the best narrative of the tragedy that ha befallen America for the last 4 years. Most importantly the author reveals why so much of the population still supports the sphincter in chief. It's. A shame that this book can't be synthesized into a vaccine and injected into that portion of our afflicted population. Great read and a pleasure to be presented with facts in such an articulate manner.Re-read this book a week later and guess what ¿ The worst predictions just came true.As a friend said " That's karma bitch, you reap what you sow."

The focus on the failing of the GOP to keep T…p from the highest seat of power is a prominent focus of this book. They are clearly to blame of the tragedies of the past administration…in this case the end surely did not justify the means. T…p was truly a scourge on democracy.

This is must read for every American voter and future voter. It not only details Donald J Trump actions as POTUS but shows the reader the true character of the man himself. In the end the author shows the reader the real problem is not solely with Trump, we the voters, the RNC, and both political parties must bear the burden of allowing this idiocy to happen. Good job Mr Date!

I couldn’t put this book down as it grabs your full attention from the first page. The author explains clearly how someone like Donald Trump was able to get elected President. He weaves together all the forces that came together just at the right time for him to score a victory. Another interesting part of the book is his analysis of how the Republicans are using Trump to further their agenda. The book is well thought out, organized, and written. It is well worth your time and money to read it.

...much less engage in objective critical thinking. As I write this, all of the author's insightful analyses have been validated in not just the recent general election results (and this month's special election in Georgia), but even more so by the disgraceful events of January 6 in our nation's capitol. I look forward to reading any subsequent analyses of the end game of the "useful idiot's" chaos presidency which seems to continue to validate Cafe's work here.

Another book I heard about from watching PCN's PA Books program. The author writes about his family history with unions. The author taught at Temple University. I went through it quickly because of the author's conversational styleof writing which matched with the way he spoke. Highly recommended.

Very funny

Mr Dàte who famously asked Trump why he lied so much has written a terrific book that helps this Canadian to understand the current state of American politics. This is a very easy to read and excellently written book. Highly recommended. BTW he deserves a medal for being the only journalist who had the b***s to challenge Trump.

Date puts forward an argument that is hard to dispute that Trump is an idiot, he has rat-like cunning, but is nevertheless an idiot. He bases his theory on a thousand examples of his actions and statements. This from saying that drinking bleach is a cure, to buying Greenland. He concludes by saying that not only has it caused thousands of innocent Americans to die but will probably destroy the GOP for generations to come. As Michelle Obama said, “the office does not change you, it exposes who you are”. In other words if you are a baddy it will show that and vice versa.CHAPTER 1 starts off with the pandemic. Date talks of all the people and groups who wanted Trump to be president and their reasons, from evangelicals to Putin. None thought that the incompetent narcissist would have to deal with a major crisis, even though Obama had Ebola and the flu epidemic of 2009 to deal with. The top echelons of the GOP knew what he was like long before he became their candidate but thought they could control him. (Just like when Hitler came to power the powers that be found otherwise.) All the journalists who followed the campaigns through 2015 and 2016 thought it was blindingly obvious that Trump was totally unsuited for the job. However the GOP felt he would fall by the wayside. He gives examples of the stupid things he did early in his presidency such as his handling of Hurricane Dorian. He said it was going to hit Alabama which was totally untrue and caused chaos. He even showed them a map on which he had drawn with a Sharpie. Most of the stupid things he did were to benefit him personally, but there were some which didn’t, such as this.CHAPTER 2 THE ROGUE WAVE. He states that nobody thought Trump would win, even Trump himself as he hired “a smallish ballroom at the Hilton Midtown for election night.” The wave includes the racist base of the GOP, only the wealthy had benefited from the Great Recession recovery, and the evangelicals had benefited from the “loading up the federal bench with like-minded judges”, Comey’s letter and finally Putin’s efforts. All formed a wave which swept an idiot into office. Date talks of the first time he met Trump in 2006 and how he gave a totally inappropriate speech all about himself; nothing to do with the event at hand. Everything since he has done has proven to show that he is a malignant, narcissistic bully only out for himself, which he never tried to hide. Date goes on to disprove his claim to riches by his business acumen. He looks at his boasting of his accomplishments in office; 95% untrue. He goes into detail of how he finds lying easier than breathing.CHAPTER 3 A CREATURE OF THE TABLOIDS. Date gives examples of when Trump used to phone papers and pretended to be someone else and praised Donald Trump eg. John Miller. The Apprentice convinced millions that he was a smart businessman; an idiot in charge of a reality show. “Seriously rich grownups avoid being on the gossip pages” but Trump loved it. Date goes into some detail about Trump’s business dealings leading to chaos and bankruptcies. “The Art of the Deal became a downright national contagion thanks to the Apprentice….truth matters, and the fact that the entire executive branch of the US government is led by people who see reality as whatever the boss wants it to be at that moment should be more than troubling”. CHAPTER 4 NIXON’S DEAL WITH THE DEVIL. “I realized how his hold went way beyond mere entertainment value, and how he had co-opted the Frankenstein’s monster of xenophobia, fear and outright racism that the Republican Party had built over the decades, but had tried to keep carefully tamed….and G W Bush’s people famously made the Willie Horton ad-which essentially told the target audience that if you voted for Mike Dukakis, a large black man would come to your home to rape and kill your wife”. Date goes into great detail showing how racist is the GOP base and how much they hated Obama because of this.CHAPTER 5 THE STEPHENS FIND THEIR STOOGE. Bannon and Miller wanted an idiot to carry out their racist policies and along came Trump. “opposition to Obama’s policies was a fig leaf for straight-up racism…he was promising what they wanted to hear MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN- which they took to mean MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN…the Breitbart propaganda machine kicked into high gear, this time completely in the service of Trump.. Bannon only lasted seven months, but the nativism, xenophobia and cultivation of racists that he and Miller brought to the West Wing survive and thrive today(2020)…neither really care about the GOP and its future”. CHAPTER 6 THE PARTY OF LINCOLN BECOMES THE PARTY OF TRUMP. “Trump could see the GOP was afraid of him”. The party thought their voters would see through him and pick a grown up against Clinton and gave him a pass. They didn’t attack him as they wanted his supporters after he dropped out. “Trump’s campaign had minimal staff, no finance structure to raise money, no network of volunteers”. He didn’t bother to do all the normal things as he was merely running an infomercial for free. In the end he had the GOP over a barrel and they had to do what he wanted eg. spend its money not his. The GOP took his side over the “released” emails and ignored the intelligence services warning about Russia. All the GOP was interested in was winning and their basic moral philosophy was dumped. The 3-legged stool of fiscal, national security and social conservatives dumped. “by pushing a $2trillion tax cut while jacking up spending, he has demolished the fiction that it’s the party of fiscal sanity”.CHAPTER 7 GOD, GUNS AND RUSSIA. Date talks about how hypocritical the religious people turned out to be. Supporting the most immoral President in history was easy for them. “hold their noses…if he followed through on his promises to appoint conservative judges and tilt the judiciary in a pro-life direction for decades to come”. But Date says this was not the case; the real reason was that they wanted white Christians to rule and run things. “the unifying cause for these Christians was the “right” to keep their children separate from black children”. He talks about how WHITE evangelicals want to keep the country this way and love Trump’s promises. This chapter talks about the NRA and the Russian connection and the lawsuit to dissolve it. He talks about why Trump is so beholden to Putin and acts like a Russian asset. He may lose in November “but he will, again, win evangelical Christians in a landslide.” CHAPTER 8 LEMONS TO LEMONADE. Moscow Mitch and Paul Ryan banged through bills early on in 2017 cutting back Obama regulations such as “making it harder for mentally ill people to buy guns” and other such wheezes; Trump took the claim for this. Date talks about how Moscow Mitch then when on to fill the judiciary with young, right wing judges who can overturn future liberal actions. The GOP realized that Trump was ignorant and uninterested in hard work thus they ignored him and did what they wanted to do. They just got him to sign them into force so he was useful to them. Date discusses in detail the tax changes the GOP did and pulled the wool over people’s eyes. He talks about many promises Trump made and hasn’t done because he has no clue eg. school vouchers, superb trade deals and so on. The GOP put up with him because they were able to get their own agenda thru.CHAPTER9 LIVE BY THE IDIOT DIE BY THE IDIOT. It starts off with the leaked UK ambassador’s emails on Trump stating in essence that he’s an idiot. “the GOP had got their long-sought goals, at a price, having to defend the unhinged guy at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue”. He goes into the price US has had to pay, and the GOP, by supporting an idiot in how he has handled Covid and the 200,000 deaths up to now. Trump wanted to repeal Obamacare cos he hates Obama but expected the GOP to do the work to achieve it. As M. Cohen says in his book, Trump does very little work and very little reading, all is based on instinct ie. chaos theory. The chapter shows that because how useless Trump is very little was done in the first 2 years even though the GOP ruled all. They then lost the House to the Democrats. Date goes into other Trump brainwaves like buying Greenland off Denmark, and destroying hurricanes with nuclear weapons. Date goes thru the nightmare foreign policy which causes chaos but makes Putin happy. He goes into a lot of the lies that Trump said as President (so easy a 10 year old child could do it). The damage he has made in the world’s eyes will take years to repair. CHAPTER 10 TRUMP MEETS THE CORONAVIRUS. “suggests that people inject disinfectants into their lungs”. The manufacturers warned them not to. He goes into Trump’s ideas on trade which are nonsensical (ask Gary Cohn), and the damage he causes as a result. “The W. Post reported the disease was in his brief in the first days of January… he was playing golf at Mar-a-Lago”. He watches tv rather than reading briefs ie. his job. (This book came out before the Woodward tapes. He could be the only person on the planet to bring down 2 US presidents). Date shows that Trump was more interested in keeping Xi happy for a trade deal than Americans dying. He compares how Trump handled it to other countries; not a contest. “Germany has in August 2020, 111 people per million (has died) to 547 p million in US.”CHAPTER 11 REPUBLICAN REQUIEM. “the future of the GOP remains hostage to a game show host” He discusses Trump’s base and their prejudices which he plays to. He specifically goes into racism and that it’s a part of the DNA in the US. “some support him because he is a tool-an useful idiot-who is at least working to bring about their true politically incorrect goals..increased use of robots in our factories and farms and white collar offices will end the livelihoods of millions more of us in the coming decades is obviously quite distressing. He was able to take advantage of that”. He talks about how the GOP is now the Trump cult party but which is living on borrowed time due to demographics. “Bill Barr seems to believe that Trump has the right to be treated as a monarch…if he were to win again, there is a good chance that (his supporters) will believe that somehow it was worth it.” But Date has gone into great detail throughout the book to prove that Trump is an idiot but an useful one to his enablers like Moscow Mitch, the RNC and the Christian Right. It’s obvious that Date believes that the next 4 years will be even worse if he wins again, and he’s right.Date is a senior White House correspondent at HuffPost , has reported on American politics for 3 decades and reminds me of Jessup in the novel, IT CANT HAPPEN HERE. PS. Guardian SEPT. 15 “Black American church leaders have accused Trump of inciting “white terrorism” against people of colour and depicting churchgoers as “thugs” in a presidential election campaign ad”

Very well written and thoroughly enlightening on the Trump enablers and the outrageous behaviour of that terrible man. What times we live in…

Revealing and adds detail to much of what we already know/knew, but a bit repetitive in parts, which makes the whole thing feel as if it's been padded.

History is going to look favourably on S.V.Date.