If you're not familiar with Tim Miller, he's a self-proclaimed reformed "practitioner of the dark arts" (a.k.a. Republican opposition researcher and political communication strategist) who had a fairly public and well-documented breakup with the Republican establishment over their embrace of Donald Trump. In this memoir, he goes into detail on his pre-Trump career in Republican politics (eventually rising to prominence as the Republican National Committee's liaison to the Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign, and later the Communications Director for Jeb Bush's 2016 presidential campaign, then discusses his experiences interviewing a number of Republican operatives who were/are still supportive of Trump at the time of the writing, and analyzing their reasons for still supporting someone that many of them admit is either a terrible person, a dangerous/incompetent person who should not be anywhere near the levers of power in the White House, or both.

While it was a fun read (Tim's sarcastic sense of humor is definitely one that I can appreciate), I'm not sure that I learned anything new from the book. It was heralded as kind of a "tell all" to explain the seemingly incomprehensible position of being a Trump supporter despite not thinking Trump is a very good person, and you can file all the reasons detailed in this book in the "yeah, no kidding" file. There are people who hate Democrats and/or "the left" so much that they'll vote for literally anyone else. There are people who think they can be the adults in the room who will reign Trump in. There are the people who prioritize proximity to wealth and power above everything, even their own morals and/or sense of shame. And there are true believers who think that Trump is genuinely a change agent whose policies will make the country better.

I'm not sure any of that was revelatory per se, but it was interesting to hear the various anecdotes he included in the book, and I appreciated how the subjects of his interviews weren't spared from his criticism over decisions that they made over the course of the Trump presidency. As a whole, it was an entertaining book to read, but not particularly new information.

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Created Jan 18, 2025 at 1:05pm • Submit your own review...