Trump in Exile

September 2, 2024
In Politico correspondent McGraw’s tart debut, ex-president Trump claws his way back to mastery of the Republican party thanks to crude bluster and the fanatical loyalty of his base. McGraw begins in 2021 with a disgraced Trump’s post–January 6 retreat to Mar-a-Lago. His grip on Republican voters remained strong, she notes—two thirds of them believed his stop-the-steal narrative—and made him a kingmaker who compelled Republican candidates in the 2022 midterms to embrace his election denialism. Banned from Twitter and Facebook, he started his own social media platform, Truth Social (McGraw gives an eye-opening rundown of how Trump snookered the main investors in that venture). Later, he bested his main Republican primary rival, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, with a mix of schoolyard taunts (“Meatball Ron”) and sheer chutzpah (he attacked DeSantis for promoting the same Covid vaccines that Trump did as president). In McGraw’s vivid rendering (“at Mar-a-Lago he was like a spinning top losing momentum”), Trump was able to survive self-inflicted disasters that would ruin any other politician (lunching with Kanye West in the midst of furor over West’s antisemitic remarks; calling for the Constitution to be suspended so that he could reclaim the presidency; undergoing criminal investigations). McGraw evocatively captures Trump’s season of despond and the chaotic energy that powered him out of it.