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Why Do So Many Republicans Tolerate Donald Trump?

Mark Leibovich’s “Thank You for Your Servitude” asks why establishment Republicans failed to prevent a hostile takeover of their party.

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THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVITUDE: Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission , by Mark Leibovich

In June 2017, the New York Times chief national correspondent Mark Leibovich visited the White House and was unexpectedly ushered into the Oval Office, where he found President Donald Trump watching (what else?) “Fox & Friends.” Trump issued a perfunctory denunciation of Leibovich’s then-employer and launched into his familiar litany of grievances and obsessions. “I had heard this all before,” Leibovich reflected later, “and was ready for it to end after about two minutes.”

The problem that Leibovich (now a staff writer at The Atlantic) faced in interpreting Trump-era politics was that its lead figure was so monotonous and monomaniacal (albeit dangerous and deranged) that the author couldn’t repeat the formula he used to such entertaining effect in his 2013 book, “This Town,” which profiled the Washington insiders and A-listers circling around the Obama White House. Instead, Leibovich’s new book ingeniously shifts the focus to the Trump International Hotel, the president’s “flagship payola palace” that operated from 2016 to 2022 just a few blocks from the White House.

Through its glittering atrium lounge passed the Republican Party’s major politicians, leaders, fixers and influence-peddlers — “the careerists who capitulated to Trumpism to preserve their livelihoods,” as Leibovich puts it. It was the critical venue for Trumpian deal-making and social climbing, and hosted some of the plotting sessions that led to the Charlottesville white supremacist rally, the Jan. 6 insurrection and both of Trump’s impeachments. The hotel was the Trumpian version of the Washington “swamp.”

“Thank You for Your Servitude” concentrates less on the MAGA true believers — the likes of Steve Bannon and Marjorie Taylor Greene — than on the twisted and tormented souls in the Republican establishment who could have prevented Trump’s hostile takeover of the party but didn’t. Such Republicans, in Leibovich’s assessment, “made Trump possible” and they “refused to stop him even after the U.S. Capitol fell under the control of some madman in a Viking hat. It was always rationalization followed by capitulation and then full surrender. The routine was always numbingly the same, and so was the sad truth at the heart of it: They all knew better.”

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Donald Trump listens to applause after signing an executive order at the White House in June 2020.

Thank You For Your Servitude review – disappointing tale of Trump’s town

Mark Leibovich had a big hit with one Washington exposé but his follow-up tells us little we did not know already

M ark Leibovich is the winner of a National Magazine Award, a former staffer of the New York Times Magazine, the author of a bestseller about Washington and a recent hire of the Atlantic, one of the hotter, the more serous news websites.

In short, he has a byline that arouses expectations of thoroughness and thoughtfulness. So one might assume that his new 304-page tome (before the acknowledgments, the notes and the index) would include some new facts or several new insights about his subjects, the Trump sycophants who enabled the most disastrous presidency of modern times.

Sadly, Leibovich has almost nothing fresh to tell us. Instead of new information, we get a recycled account of “the dirt that Trump tracked in, the people he broke, and the swamp he did not drain”.

To be fair, Leibovich is remarkably up front about his lack of originality. As early as page 11 he warns the reader that “you will almost certainly recall many of the episodes described in the chapters ahead”. But it is still remarkable that he is unable to tell us almost anything new about the greatest hits of the Trump administration .

In its preoccupation with gossip and a near-religious avoidance of substance, this book is a parody of the worst practices of the Washington press corps – which are among the biggest reasons a dangerous buffoon like Trump was able to reach the White House in the first place.

Leibovoich does make one interesting observation in the first chapter, when he describes the Republican party as “a political version” of the “Stanley Milgram experiment on obedience” conducted at Yale in the early 1960s, when the researcher’s subjects were instructed to administer electric shocks upon innocent neighbors, ostensibly in the next room.

“The force of the shocks was apparently becoming more and more painful as the victims screamed” – yet 65% of the subjects kept following instructions to continue the shocks.

“The essence of obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person’s wishes,” Milgram concluded. “He therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions.”

Leibovich writes: “Republicans demonstrated much of the same fealty during the Trump years.”

Unfortunately, his original insights begin and end there.

The rest of the book consists of everything he wrote down in his notebooks, which he wisely left there until he sat down to compose this volume.

His most frequent refrain is “Once again, you might recall all of it” – as indeed we do when he recounts the brief moment during the 2016 campaign when it looked like Marco Rubio might be the man to rescue the Republican establishment from Trump, or Rick Perry’s single spate of truth-telling, when he called the orange man from Queens a “toxic mix of demagoguery, mean–spiritedness and nonsense”.

Of course, this “did nothing” to stop Perry endorsing Trump and becoming his energy secretary – but yes, we already recall that too.

Like any good clip job, the book does include a few good lines – all of them from stories generated by others. Trump’s second secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, was “like a heat-seeking missile for Trump’s ass” (reported by Susan Glasser, in the New Yorker ). Or Stormy Daniels, recoiling in horror when the late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel referred to her “making love” with the future president.

“Gross!” said Daniels. “What is wrong with you? I laid there and prayed for death.”

(A few paragraphs before that, Leibovich praises himself for the “minor feat” of not mentioning Daniels until page 153.)

Former president George W Bush keeps covered in the rain at the swearing in of Donald Trump as president.

The author’s tenuous grasp of substance is most evident when he fudges exactly how much the Republican party had done to prepare itself for this moment, after its decades-long dances with racism and homophobia, dating back to Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy in 1968 and George W Bush’s courageous endorsement of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in 2004.

Leibovich makes fun of Mitch McConnell for telling Politico Trump was “not going to change the basic philosophy of the party”, a prediction which turned out to be completely correct, since Trump’s biggest accomplishments were huge tax cuts for the rich and the appointment of three of the most disastrous, pro-business and anti-civil rights supreme court justices of all time.

But Leibovich treats the Senate Republican leader’s comment with all the wisdom of a spokesman for the Republican National Committee: “This turned out to be 100% true, except for Trump’s ‘basic philosophy’ on foreign policy, free trade, rule of law, deficits, tolerance for dictators, government activism, family values … and every virtuous quality the Republican party ever aspired to in its best, pre-Trump days.”

If you want to hear Leibovich reprise all of the softball questions he asked (half of them off the record) of all Trump’s sycophants, this book is for you. But if you’re interested in explosive new facts about exactly how Trump tried to demolish American democracy, skip this and stay tuned for the next hearing of the House select committee to investigate the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

Thank You For Your Servitude: Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission is published in the US by Penguin Press

Politics books
US politics
Donald Trump
Trump administration
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Thank You for Your Servitude

Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission

By Mark Leibovich

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About Thank You for Your Servitude

The #1 New York Times Bestseller “He’s one of the best chroniclers of politics today.” –Jake Tapper “This is a really funny book.” –Kara Swisher “His writing is so damn good.” –John Berman “Really fascinating…There are so many revelations.” –Anderson Cooper “The new must read summer book.” –Stephanie Ruhle From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller This Town , the eyewitness account of how the GOP collaborated with Donald Trump to transform Washington’s “swamp” into a gold-plated hot tub—and a onetime party of rugged individualists into a sycophantic personality cult. In the early months of Trump’s candidacy, the Republican Party’s most important figures, people such as Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Lindsey Graham, were united—and loud—in their scorn and contempt. Even more, in their outrage: Trump was a menace and an affront to our democracy. Then, awkwardly, Trump won. Thank You for Your Servitude is Mark Leibovich’s unflinching account of the moral rout of a major American political party, tracking the transformation of Rubio, Cruz, Graham, and their ilk into the administration’s chief enablers, and the swamp’s lesser lights into frantic chasers of the grift. What would these politicos do to preserve their place in the sun, or at least the orbit of the spray tan? What would they do to preserve their “relevance”? Almost anything, it turns out. Trump’s savage bullying of everyone in his circle, along with his singular command of his political base, created a dangerous culture of submission in the Republican Party. Meanwhile, many of the most alpha of the lapdogs happily conceded to Mark Leibovich that they were “in on the joke.” As Lindsey Graham told the author, his supporters in South Carolina generally don’t read The New York Times , and they won’t read this book, either. All that cynicism, shading into nihilism, led to a country truly unhinged from reality, and to the events of January 6, 2021. It’s a vista that makes the Washington of This Town seem like a comedy of manners in comparison. Thank You for Your Servitude isn’t another view from the Oval Office: it’s the view from the Trump Hotel. We can check out any time we want, but only time will tell if we can ever leave.

Listen to a sample from Thank You for Your Servitude

Also by mark leibovich.

About Mark Leibovich

Mark Leibovich is a recipient of the National Magazine Award for profile writing. He is the author of four books, including the number one New York Times bestsellers This Town and Thank You For Your Servitude, about the political culture of twenty-first-century… More about Mark Leibovich

Product Details

Midnight in Washington

The Divider

It Was All a Lie

True Crimes and Misdemeanors

The Man Who Ran Washington

Front Row at the Trump Show

Confidence Man

The Gatekeepers

“The author couldn’t repeat the formula he used to such entertaining effect in his 2013 book, This Town . . . Instead, Leibovich’s new book ingeniously shifts the focus . . . extremely funny in spots, although much of the humor has a whistling-past-the-graveyard quality. Like the Comedian in Alan Moore’s graphic novel Watchmen , Leibovich was shocked out of his previous cynicism and absurdism (to some extent at least) by the enormity of Trump’s threat.” —New York Times Book Review “[Leibovich is] just so good at this. He is a world-class ranter, continuing an American tradition that includes such dyspeptic luminaries as H.L. Mencken, Hunter S. Thompson and P.J. O’Rourke . . . [He is] a brilliant interviewer able to wheedle not-quite-admissions from his subjects, who give him all the access in the world.” — Washington Post “The main attraction to Leibovich’s work is his wicked satirical talent. He comes at his interviewees with a skewer in one hand, a scalpel in the other and a glint in his eye. His frequent eviscerations of major figures range from subtle to scabrous . . . [T]he material in Thank You is new, much of it from interviews done since the 2020 election . . . Thank You should not be mistaken for a ‘fun read’—as This Town was often described . . . Thank You is on another plane of warning and foreboding. There are many laughs, to be sure, but with bitter aftertaste. And the message here, the final word, is anything but fun.” — NPR.org “A fascinating account . . . The greatest value of Thank You For Your Servitude is Leibovich’s ability to understand the startling motivations of members of the House and Senate and many White House advisers and aides.” — The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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‘Watching for Discomfort’: Mark Leibovich on Reporting His New Trump Book

A Q&A with the author on the various ways the Republican subjects of his new book, Thank You for Your Servitude , revealed themselves

red and black squares in a grid with black and white photos

What distinguishes Mark Leibovich’s new book about the Trump years from all the many, many others is that he started it with an unusual premise: He was bored with Trump. “I never found Donald Trump to be remotely captivating as a stand-alone figure,” Leibovich, a staff writer for The Atlantic , writes in an excerpt . Far more interesting were those who stood next to Trump and enabled his rise—the Lindsey Grahams and Kevin McCarthys—those who should have known better. What made them tick? That was a journalistic question with some mystery to it. I talked with Leibovich about the people he calls the “collaborators” and whether he has a grand “banality of evil” theory to explain their behavior. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Gal Beckerman: So how does it feel to become D.C.’s greatest contemporary sociologist? Do you still get invited to parties?

Mark Leibovich: Basically, when This Town came out in 2013, a lot of people were saying, Oh, well, you’ll never eat lunch in D.C. again . The opposite happened. The book did really well. And I guess everybody loves a winner. And it was written in such a way that Republicans or conservatives thought that it was an indictment of big government, while liberal Washington and liberal Democrats thought it was an indictment of big money in politics. So everyone sort of claimed it as their own. There are a few people who snub me around town, but not that many. At a certain point, I think you reach immunity.

Beckerman: Your new book’s big theme is sycophancy in our politics. But journalists struggle with this, too, that fear of losing access that leads to lobbing softballs. This must be a dynamic that you’re constantly negotiating: How far can you go without burning the people whom you actually need to do your reporting?

Leibovich: I always thought there was a pretty simple answer to this question: Don’t burn people. If you make ground rules, you make agreements, be good to your word. But once you get inside the tent, there are ways to draw people out. There are ways to see them and hear them that others might not. And that’s the challenge.

Beckerman: You always seem to notice the peripheral things that end up being the most revealing. I’m thinking of Kevin McCarthy showing you photos of himself hanging out with famous people. It might never have occurred to him that that would end up in an article, but actually it becomes the thing you remember most.

Read: Kevin McCarthy, have you no sense of decency?

Leibovich: People don’t quite realize the degree to which they’re revealing themselves and the ways in which they’re revealing themselves. And it doesn’t always align with the image they might want to portray. To put it mildly.

Beckerman: Do you have tricks for getting this material?

Leibovich: Part of it is choosing the right questions, watching for patterns, watching for discomfort. I noticed that McCarthy kept getting really, really visibly nervous every time Trump’s name came up and started complaining: “Why do you keep asking about Trump?” And, to me, that was a tell.

Beckerman: And there must have been many such moments with the people who are at the center of this book, the supporting cast who kept backing Trump.

Leibovich: They never quite realized how central they were. What people miss because they are so fixated on the shiny object of Trump himself and all the intrigue around him is that he would not be where he is, his presidency would not be possible, without the submission of the Republican Party. And it’s mostly the leadership. You know, Nixon was ended ultimately by Republicans, who after a long period of time just said, All right, enough . I mean, you had Republicans defecting. Eventually they stood up, and that was it for him. Would Nixon have survived with Kevin McCarthy as the leader of the House Republicans and Mitch McConnell, and Fox News? I don’t know. Maybe? But I think this was a big, big gap in all the reporting. It was extremely relevant and extremely fertile ground.

Read: The moral desolation of the GOP

Beckerman: So at the end of this, did you come to any sort of grand unifying theory or “banality of evil” concept that explains the actions of a [Rudy] Giuliani or a McCarthy?

Leibovich: It’s funny; I’m not much of a grand-unified-theory guy, but I do obviously believe that people are both unified and very distinct and very different, very damaged in many cases, each in their own way. There are certain recurring patterns, like desperation to keep a job. As Lindsey Graham said, doing whatever it takes to stay relevant. Or employed, in his case. There is no one in the Senate right now who needs this job more than Lindsey Graham. Kevin McCarthy has decided that he just wants to be speaker of the House. And if he can get there in November, everything will be redeemed. I think, then, there are a lot of banal reasons, like those who just like to take the path of least resistance, just good, old-fashioned fear and also fear of physical harm. And I think those threats were very real.

Beckerman: The part that I found most depressing about the people you profiled was the sheer nihilism, the disregard for their legacy. I wonder if that depressed you too, plumbing the depths of it.

Leibovich: Yeah, it was depressing. It would be more depressing if it weren’t counteracted by the opposite being demonstrated, in unfortunately pretty isolated cases in the Republican Party through people like Mitt Romney or Adam Kinzinger. There are plenty of people who have courage and decency and want to do the right thing patriotically, but unfortunately the Republican Party does not seem to be a real hotbed of them at this time, when the country needs them more than ever.

Beckerman: Beyond the descriptive power of your book, did you think of it as achieving some further kind of end, at the very least shaming some of these folks? Leibovich: You know, a writer brings his own desperation to bear here. And a lot of it is just finishing the damn book on time. I had three months off between when I left The New York Times and started at The Atlantic . And that was a godsend, because I did a lot of rewriting just because it’s a pretty fast-moving story. It would have been an incomplete book without January 6 and the events of last year. I was also glad to get Ukraine in there. I think the context of the last few months is really, really important as far as imposing both a moral clarity on the Trump years but also in completing the story and trying to propel it forward as we hurtle toward 2024, which I think will be a real reckoning election both for the Republican Party and, if he gets to the nomination, the whole country.

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clock This article was published more than 1 year ago

This primal scream over Trump’s enablers provides only a partial catharsis

As a certifiably “serious” person, I’ve spent the past seven years trying to understand Trump voters. After all, they’re our fellow citizens. Their flagrant anger must have some justification. It must be our fault. I mean, extensive analysis and soul-searching and self-flagellation need to be undertaken if the republic is to survive, right? There must be a way to find common ground. (I really believe this, by the way.)

Mark Leibovich is having none of it. In his new book, “ Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission ,” he uses caustic quotation marks around his occasional attempts to “understand” his fellow Americans as an indication of the futility of the enterprise. His purpose is more derisive and disdainful: “I . . . never found Trump that captivating as a stand-alone character. . . . Far more compelling to me were the slavishly devoted Republicans whom Trump drew to his side,” he writes. Most of the events he describes are familiar, he says. “In all likelihood you’d rather not relive many of them. I sympathize.” But “the idea [of the book] is to tell the story of this ordeal through the supplicant fanboys who permitted Donald Trump’s depravity to be inflicted on the rest of us.”

Shooting vultures in a barrel, you say? Can there be fatter targets than Lindsey Graham or Kevin McCarthy or Rudy Giuliani? Indeed, I was prepared to bluster about how cheap and dangerous such corrosive cynicism is. But Leibovich, by the end, sort of won me over.

Part of it is that he’s just so good at this. He is a world-class ranter, continuing an American tradition that includes such dyspeptic luminaries as H.L. Mencken, Hunter S. Thompson and P.J. O’Rourke. Trump, he writes, “has a way of wearing you down. He invades your habitat, like the opossum that gets into the attic, dies, stinks, and attracts derivative nuisances.” Trump’s utter lack of shame “gave him the advantage of being bulletproof in his own scrambled head.” Sen. Ted Cruz saw his own “unpopularity in Washington [as] a defining asset.” Attorney General William Barr was the “Yo-Yo Ma of WH toadyism, with Trump as his cello.” Lindsey Graham was a “Gilligan to Donald Trump’s Skipper.”

Leibovich is, more subtly, a brilliant interviewer able to wheedle not-quite-admissions from his subjects, who give him all the access in the world. “I’m pretty much brain dead,” Lindsey Graham admits to him after the 2020 election, knowing full well that the journalistic aim of the enterprise is evisceration. “I’ll be seeing you back in D.C. We’ll visit.” House Minority Leader McCarthy shows Leibovich cellphone photos of him posing with Trump, Pope Francis, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Kobe Bryant, and talks about how much he loves going to the Super Bowl and the Oscars. Former House speaker Paul Ryan tells Leibovich, “The President put out a tweet last night that was really good.”

The entire Trump project was a scurrilous joke, of course. A parody of American political life and decline. The primary venue for Leibovich is the Trump Hotel, which he compares to the set of “Cheers.” It serves as a nesting place for “Trump’s usual collection of pet rocks.” He gleans gems at the Benjamin Bar, trolls the BLT Prime steak house upstairs where Giuliani has a regular table with the nameplate, “Rudolph W. Giuliani, Private Office.” Lev Parnas, one of Giuliani’s Ukrainian enablers, says he never went to the White House, “All I saw is the Trump Hotel.” William Barr guarantees his place in the pantheon by signing a contract to hold a holiday party at the hotel with a minimum cost of $31,500. In advance of the Jan. 6 , 2021, insurrection, Trump raises minimum room rates from $476 to $1,999 per night.

Yes, we’ve seen these scenes before. But, gradually, I began to feel my gorge rising — the joke was on us, the American people, especially those of us, the dreaded elite, who took things like, well, health care and pollution and education and overseas authoritarians such as Vladimir Putin seriously.

Leibovich builds his case sequentially. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump’s fellow Republicans devolved toward cowardice through stages of moral blindness and, finally, lickspittle supplication. First, they ignored Trump’s utter lack of knowledge and crass behavior, hoping not to alienate his surprising legions. Their attacks on the Play-Doh despot were belated and pathetic. Florida’s Marco Rubio talked about the size of Trump’s hands. Cruz didn’t even endorse him in his convention speech. South Carolina’s Nikki Haley said, “Donald Trump is everything we . . . teach our kids not to do in kindergarten.” But he slaughtered the traditional Republicans. They swallowed hard and backed him against Hillary Clinton, secure in the fog of conventional wisdom that she would win and provide a perfect piñata for Republicans when she became president. But Clinton campaigned with all the zest of a day-old kale salad, overwhelmed by Trump’s deluge of nacho cheese dip. Then the Republicans figured, well, he’ll pivot toward solemnity now that he’s president. Nope. “If your campaign is a cult of personality, can you really modulate that personality and still retain the cult?” Leibovich points out.

The Republicans were stuck in a devil’s bargain: They got their Supreme Court nominees and tax breaks for rich people, but they had to genuflect before a man most of them considered a “moron” (Secretary of State Rex Tillerson), an “idiot” (Chief of Staff John Kelly) and a “dope” (national security adviser H.R. McMaster). They were wrong, though. Trump is the Napoleon of nincompoops. He has a genius for identifying the soft underbelly of Washington’s tired conventions, and the weakness of his opponents. And he’s in on the joke: “The perverse beauty of Trump was that he could be weirdly forthcoming about how full of sh-- he was,” Leibovich writes.

So the GOP lapsed into nihilism. Its leaders regurgitated Trump’s lies. “It’s all theater, it doesn’t matter,” Graham said. When asked about how he would be remembered in history, Giuliani said, “My attitude about my legacy is: f--k it.” And the first lady wore a jacket emblazoned “I Really Don’t Care. Do U?”

They could be this brazen — they could almost get away with destroying American democracy — because a significant percentage of the American people, the folks that we “serious” people keep trying to “understand,” are too lazy and crass and bigoted to care. They just want revenge against the people who propose transgender bathrooms. And by the time Leibovich gets around to Jan. 6, 2021, I’m all in with the Atlantic’s exquisite Caitlin Flanagan, who describes the rioters as “deadbeat dads, YouPorn enthusiasts, slow students, and MMA fans . . . with bellies full of beer and Sausage McMuffins, maybe a little high on Adderall.”

What a catharsis! After all those hours of trying to figure out why the most pampered and affluent and free people in history — people up to their ears in cellphones and flat-screen televisions and supercharged pickup trucks — are so angry, it feels good to whup the yokels upside the head, doesn’t it? I mean, at a certain point, our oh-so-civilized attempts at “understanding” become indulgence. Our attempt to respectfully bind the national wounds becomes a lesser version of the Republicans’ capitulation to the slovenly ignorance of the Trumpers. Why can’t we be as angry at them as they are at us?

Because we know better. We know that if we don’t figure this out, we don’t have a country. So, thanks for the primal scream, Mark. It felt . . . wonderful. But now it’s time to search, once more, for our better angels, even if they’re drowned out by chants of “Let’s go, Brandon” at the NASCAR races.

Joe Klein is the author of seven books, including “Primary Colors” and, most recently, “Charlie Mike.”

Thank You for Your Servitude

Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission

By Mark Leibovich

Penguin Press. 352 pp. $29

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He Exposed the D.C. Swamp. Now He’s Taking on Trump’s Biggest Sycophants

By Kara Voght

I met Mark Leibovich on a Friday in June in exactly the sort of place I’d expect to find him: At BLT Steak, a power lunch spot three blocks from the White House in the heart of downtown D.C. The honeyed wood paneling, sienna leather, and $34 wagyu steak salad screamed “This Town,” shorthand for the circle jerk of Washington lobbyists, lawmakers, and lackeys who ostensibly run our global superpower. Leibovich had chronicled this milieu of Washington in a 2013 bestseller by the same name, and when Donald Trump steamrolled into the capital city in January 2017, he undertook a sequel, Thank You For Your Servitude: Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission , out on July 12.

And how was the journalist responsible for popularizing “This Town” feeling about it after four years of Donald Trump?

“I’m absolutely tired of this story, no question,” he sighs. “I’ve been tired of the Trump story for a long, long time.”

There’s no shock to this revelation after reading through Leibovich’s latest. He’d set out to write a This Town for the Trump era, only to discover the deep cynicism at the premise of his 2013 hit wouldn’t cut it for his encore. “ This Town , in retrospect, feels like a comedy of manners,” he says. “That premise was way too light.” Instead, he produced a “less fun book,” one that chronicles how Trump “turned the swamp into his own gold-plated Jacuzzi,” as he writes in the book’s introduction, and how the characters of This Town capitulated to Trumpism to preserve their livelihoods.

“This is not a Trump book,” he says. “This is a book about people that permitted it.”

His publisher had suggested BLT Steak as the setting for our conversation, as a stand-in for its (now-defunct) sister restaurant that had been inside the (also-defunct) Trump International Hotel in the Old Post Office Building in downtown Washington (which you may recall from the nation’s debate over whether spending at the hotel by powerful foreign interests constituted “emoluments”). Leibovich had frequented the hotel hangout as he researched the book, going there “for pure journalism reasons or anthropological reasons or sadistic reasons,” he explains. It was a good perch for spotting Rudy Giuliani or the Trump children. That the shrimp cocktail was decent was one of the few upsides.

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The only parallels to the Trump Hotel location were the (also decent) shrimp cocktail and Leibovich’s dispirited outlook on the state of American politics. “It keeps perpetuating because people allow it,” Leibovich laments through sips of Diet Coke. “People who know better allow it, the voters allow it, the Republican Party allows it.” His tone is laced with both gravity and exasperation. “It was harder to find the fun in this. I mean, I’m not sure I even looked that hard.”

In the days after Trump’s 2016 shock victory, Leibovich considered that a reality television president who had once spanked a porn star with a magazine cover bearing his own face could actually be a good thing. “Maybe this was the shock to the system This Town needed,” Leibovich says of his thought process. Hadn’t This Town, after all, been a damning account of the capital’s creatures of comfort, of Republicans and Democrats who performed partisanship and public service as they gained wealth and fame doing neither? The delusion departed as quickly as it had arrived. “Oh, Michael Flynn is going to be the National Security Advisor? Never mind.”

I am one of many young(ish) political journalists not ashamed to confess This Town inspired my decision to join the profession. The book had pierced the veil of political propriety to reveal Washington for what it is: a sycophantic symphony of self-promoters who line their pockets and professional reputations at the expense, very often, of the American voter. It was character assassination that wielded ethnography as the weapon — not earth-shattering scoops revealing malfeasance, but the human peculiarities that enabled misconduct in the first place. And, as compared to many of Leibovich’s staid New York Times colleagues who produced said scoops, it was fun to read. (I disclose this so you know the effort I required to avoid a full impression of Chris Farley’s sweaty SNL interview of Paul McCartney.)

But when I finally arrived in Washington in the fall of 2017, I didn’t recognize it as the city described in the pages of This Town . The Trump Show had been on air for nearly eight months; that particular week’s episode featured the 45th president hollering at a little boy as he mowed the White House lawn. Leibovich saw something more sinister: The rituals of This Town still applied — in particular, the time-tested practice of swapping proximity to power (Cabinet member, senior administration official, congressional confidante) for financial gain (cable news commentator, best-selling tell-all, speaking engagements).

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“It was basically people speaking the same language of This Town — self-perpetuation, staying well-fed, building your brand,” Leibovich explains. “The difference now is that the stakes are higher and the end game is terrifying.”

Few exemplify this exchange in Leibovich’s telling as vividly as Reince Priebus, the former Republican National Committee chairman whose “self-preservation” strategy” was six months as Trump’s chief of staff, “a decent minimum tenure he could cash in on for life.” Ditto Lindsey Graham, who permitted Trump bullying as proof of his relevance, the coin of Capitol Hill greenrooms. “The degree to which they will just so blatantly lay out for you — the way they’re playing the president of the United States, how easy it is to get what you want from him — was quite something,” Leibovich says. “But I don’t think readers appreciate it fully.”

The deleterious result of their game, of course, is the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the greatest test of the union since the Civil War. Leibovich’s portraits of the Trump toadies give way to several chapters on that dark day, lingering with care to illustrate just how the GOP enabled a temper-prone president as he attempted a coup. “Republicans became the party that made Trump possible and refused to stop him, even after the U.S. Capitol fell under the control of some madman in a Viking hat,” he writes.

The sober telling still leaves room for Leibovich’s characteristic wryness, but it’s employed differently and, often, for darker contemplations. One memorable example finds Leibovich comparing Trump to an “opossum that gets into the attic, dies, stinks, and attracts derivative nuisances.” He takes a beat to recognize that “It’s probably disrespectful” to compare the office of the presidency to a rotting varmint, but he can’t find the energy to care. “I used to be mindful of these things,” he writes. “Color me worn down.”

If Leibovich sounds like a man who might abandon the Washington story once and for all, he sort of is. “ There’s a part of me that wants to jump off and cover the NBA or something else entirely,” he admits at one point. (He won’t, but the impulse was understandable: His beloved Boston Celtics had lost the NBA championship the night before we spoke, an outcome that had left him “thoroughly depressed.”)

I ask Leibovich why, given his obvious disillusionment, he continues to write about politics — why not take another break, as he did with Big Game , his book about the NFL, and cover something else instead? For now, he’ll stick with it, in part out of a sense of duty. “You do the story that feels important,” he explains. “I could be dispirited as hell about this story, but that doesn’t make it any less important.”

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Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission

From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller This Town , the eyewitness account of how the GOP collaborated with Donald Trump to transform Washington’s “swamp” into a gold-plated hot tub—and a onetime party of rugged individualists into a sycophantic personality cult.

In the early months of Trump’s candidacy, the Republican Party’s most important figures, people such as Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Lindsey Graham, were united—and loud—in their scorn and contempt. Even more, in their outrage: Trump was a menace and an affront to our democracy. Then, awkwardly, Trump won.

Thank You for Your Servitude is Mark Leibovich’s unflinching account of the moral rout of a major American political party, tracking the transformation of Rubio, Cruz, Graham, and their ilk into the administration’s chief enablers, and the swamp’s lesser lights into frantic chasers of the grift. What would these politicos do to preserve their place in the sun, or at least the orbit of the spray tan? What would they do to preserve their “relevance”? Almost anything, it turns out. Trump’s savage bullying of everyone in his circle, along with his singular command of his political base, created a dangerous culture of submission in the Republican Party. Meanwhile, many of the most alpha of the lapdogs happily conceded to Mark Leibovich that they were “in on the joke.” As Lindsey Graham told the author, his supporters in South Carolina generally don’t read The New York Times , and they won’t read this book, either. All that cynicism, shading into nihilism, led to a country truly unhinged from reality, and to the events of January 6, 2021. It’s a vista that makes the Washington of This Town seem like a comedy of manners in comparison.

Thank You for Your Servitude isn’t another view from the Oval Office: it’s the view from the Trump Hotel. We can check out any time we want, but only time will tell if we can ever leave.

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Thank You for Your Servitude

Donald trump's washington and the price of submission.

4.4 • 134 Ratings

Publisher Description

The #1 New York Times Bestseller “He’s one of the best chroniclers of politics today.” –Jake Tapper “This is a really funny book.” –Kara Swisher “His writing is so damn good.” –John Berman “Really fascinating...There are so many revelations.” –Anderson Cooper “The new must read summer book.” –Stephanie Ruhle From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller This Town , the eyewitness account of how the GOP collaborated with Donald Trump to transform Washington’s “swamp” into a gold-plated hot tub—and a onetime party of rugged individualists into a sycophantic personality cult. In the early months of Trump’s candidacy, the Republican Party’s most important figures, people such as Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Lindsey Graham, were united—and loud—in their scorn and contempt. Even more, in their outrage: Trump was a menace and an affront to our democracy. Then, awkwardly, Trump won. Thank You for Your Servitude is Mark Leibovich’s unflinching account of the moral rout of a major American political party, tracking the transformation of Rubio, Cruz, Graham, and their ilk into the administration’s chief enablers, and the swamp’s lesser lights into frantic chasers of the grift. What would these politicos do to preserve their place in the sun, or at least the orbit of the spray tan? What would they do to preserve their “relevance”? Almost anything, it turns out. Trump’s savage bullying of everyone in his circle, along with his singular command of his political base, created a dangerous culture of submission in the Republican Party. Meanwhile, many of the most alpha of the lapdogs happily conceded to Mark Leibovich that they were “in on the joke.” As Lindsey Graham told the author, his supporters in South Carolina generally don’t read The New York Times , and they won’t read this book, either. All that cynicism, shading into nihilism, led to a country truly unhinged from reality, and to the events of January 6, 2021. It’s a vista that makes the Washington of This Town seem like a comedy of manners in comparison. Thank You for Your Servitude isn’t another view from the Oval Office: it’s the view from the Trump Hotel. We can check out any time we want, but only time will tell if we can ever leave.

Customer Reviews

The making of the toddler-in-chief.

I’m not sure why I picked this book of the many that have come out since djt absconded w/top secret records retreating to the Florida swamp, but I’m glad I did. As promised Mr Leibovich has written from an outsiders inside perspective on the politics of personality. That’s what politics are often about, who do you know and what can they do for you. That was djt’s downfall. He had no real sense of the people he hired. He thought they’d be there for him no matter what, and they had gone home to work on their resumes.

Must read then pass along

Really really really great insight into our vanishing democracy. A MUST read if you have children. I have read many books on the trump phenomenon and this one sums it up best. A great read and a scary ride

More Books by Mark Leibovich

Author Interviews

Blind loyalty is helping sustain trump's power in the republican party, new book says.

Juana Summers

Courtney Dorning

NPR's Juana Summers talks with journalist Mark Leibovich about his new book Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission.

JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

Donald Trump has been teasing he plans to run for president in 2024. The first time he ran for president, his fellow Republicans - well, they were not so welcoming.

(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)

LINDSEY GRAHAM: He's a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.

MARCO RUBIO: We are not going to turn over the conservative movement to a con artist who is telling...

TED CRUZ: This man is a pathological liar. The man is utterly amoral. Morality does not exist for him.

SUMMERS: Well, those Republicans - South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Texas Senator Ted Cruz - and many others have since changed their tune.

GRAHAM: Trump can be a handful, but he is the most dominant figure in the Republican Party.

RUBIO: Donald Trump has committed to cut taxes.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: ...The Republican candidate for president, Donald J. Trump.

CRUZ: Well, I am supporting the Republican nominee because I think Hillary Clinton is...

SUMMERS: That fealty, that blind loyalty is something that Atlantic writer Mark Leibovich says has been central to Trump's ability to hold on to power in the Republican Party. And it's also the subject of his new book, "Thank You For Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington And The Price Of Submission." Mark Leibovich joins me now. Hey there.

MARK LEIBOVICH: Hey, Juana.

SUMMERS: So your book begins in the midst of the 2016 Republican presidential primary. But I want to focus on, actually, some of the later years that your book covers - the period surrounding the 2020 election and culminating with the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6. You know, we are on the eve of new hearings by the congressional panel investigating those attacks. And I'm so curious - watching them with this book and your interviews for it in the background, what have you learned about the former president and his allies?

LEIBOVICH: Nothing good. What's astonishing to me, first of all, I mean, given everything we've been through with Donald Trump and continue to learn about Donald Trump, you know, he remains so wildly popular in the Republican Party, which is ultimately his superpower. The reason for this superpower is because none of the putative leaders of the Republican Party have pushed back on him at all. Kevin McCarthy, Lindsey Graham, even, you know, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, who might be less vocal about it, have enabled him at every turn.

And also, with the hearings, you see the performance of Liz Cheney, Cassidy Hutchinson, some of these state election workers who come before them and their very simple, brave testimony doing their patriotic work despite great risk to themselves, threats, intimidation. They do it anyway, and that stands in such sharp relief from the utter silence that continues from Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell on down. They are pretending that these hearings don't exist. And what this book does is it gives a voice to all of them as they made this deal, made this calculation over the last five, six years.

SUMMERS: You brought up the names there of a number of prominent Republicans who you spoke to about the events of January 6. And I have to say I was particularly struck by what former House Speaker Paul Ryan told you about what that day was like for him. You wrote that he broke down into tears that day.

LEIBOVICH: Well, I mean, I think Paul Ryan is an interesting case. I mean, he clearly was not a big Trump fan and didn't do that much to hide it early on. But he worked very, very closely with Donald Trump because nothing was more important to Paul Ryan than, one, keeping his caucus happy but, two, tax reform. So fast-forward to a few months ago. I sort of asked him about what it was like to see what he was there for the inception for and what it turned out to be at the insurrection. And he described just sitting there, watching things unfold on January 6, 2021, and just sobbing and sobbing uncontrollably. And he said, look, I'm not a crier. And there I was, just sobbing in front of the TV. I recognized a lot of my old security details, you know, sort of going mano a mano against the rioters on TV. I wrote them emails trying to buck them up. I didn't know what else to do.

And, you know, he looked so miserable at the prospect of what has happened and very despairing. And I finally said, do you yourself have any regrets? Were any of these tears of complicity? And as we're sitting here, you're still on the board of Fox News. I mean, yeah, there is a very direct correlation between Donald Trump's continued viability in your party and Fox News. And he didn't want to go there. He didn't want to sort of explore the issues of complicity, certainly on the record, that I wanted him to go to. But clearly, the conflict was very much brought to bear in that conversation.

SUMMERS: There are also Republicans involved, like Cassidy Hutchinson, for example, who, despite threats and enormous pressure, testified before the January 6 committee. Do you think something like that - and we may hear more from other similarly minded Republicans soon. Is something like that enough to turn the tide?

LEIBOVICH: That's a great question, Juana. I've thought a lot about that. I think, you know, one of the gifts of the January 6 committee - I mean, obviously, Republicans are saying, oh, it's a slanted committee; it's not legitimate; we're just ignoring it. Most of the testimony has come from Republicans. And the example of Cassidy Hutchinson, the example of the Ukraine resistance, the example of even, you know, the conservatives in the British Parliament. I mean, there are examples all around us of what courage looks like - simple courage, just simply telling the truth. And it has never been cast in sharper relief.

And I have to think that what has been going on in these 1/6 committee meetings has been quite shaming, probably more so than Republicans realize, which might, I think, account for maybe why Pat Cipollone, the former White House counsel, agreed to testify in a transcribed session, but also why I think others might come forward in the next few weeks, and hopefully they will.

SUMMERS: By and large, your book focuses on the class of elected Republicans, and I guess I'll call them professional Republicans, who are in many ways responsible for or have a hand in President Trump's rise. But at the same time, there are many voters out there who support the former president, his ideologies, the ways in which he walks through the world. So can you kind of talk about that interplay there? People liked what he was selling.

LEIBOVICH: Absolutely. Yeah. No, I mean, look, this is not an indictment of Republican voters necessarily - or Trump voters. And I don't think anyone reading this will look to it to understand - what are they thinking? What are their concerns? Why do they still like Trump? My focus was on the people who have allowed Donald Trump to remain so popular, i.e. the putative leaders of the Republican Party in the various states, in the House, in the Senate, who continue to support him, who continue to live in such fear of him - and also, look, a lot of his Cabinet. I mean, you know, up and down the ladder. I mean, they all very privately know exactly what this guy is all about.

Does Mike Pence get credit for doing the bare minimum to actually stand before Donald Trump and actually say no at the very end? Sure, I give him some credit. But ultimately, if you're going to try to make a dent in Donald Trump's devotion and the cult of personality that he continues to enjoy within the Republican Party, you need to do more than the bare minimum.

SUMMERS: You have been a chronicler of Washington for a long time now, and you have known many of the people that you're writing about here are - the elected officials, the operatives from top to bottom for some time. In writing this book, was there anything that you learned that surprised you?

LEIBOVICH: I mean, I think a lot of it with some of them has just been utter disappointment, given the level of submission and the level of sort of soul-selling that so many people that have been sort of entrenched figures in D.C. for so long have been engaging in. I have never seen, as a reporter in Washington covering politics for, you know, almost a quarter century, a bigger gap between what elected Republican, quote-unquote, "leaders" will say to me privately versus what they will say on the record. The yawning gap between the public and private is just striking because they all know better.

SUMMERS: Mark Leibovich is the author of "Thank You For Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington And The Price Of Submission." Thanks so much for being here.

LEIBOVICH: Thanks, Juana. I appreciate it.

(SOUNDBITE OF BADBADNOTGOOD AND GHOSTFACE KILLAH SONG, "STREET KNOWLEDGE")

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Donald trump's washington and the price of submission.

by Mark Leibovich ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2022

A thorough if sometimes glib account of a disastrous presidency.

Relive the Trump administration from the perspectives of the toadies who enabled it.

Veteran New York Times Washington reporter Leibovich focuses the narrative on “the Sean Spicers, Kellyanne Conways, [and] any of the other Washington C-listers who were bumped temporarily up to B-list status by their proximity to Donald J. Trump.” Everywhere he looks, he finds White House aides and GOP leaders privately bemoaning the president while publicly defending him. It doesn’t take deep political acumen to figure out the root of this hypocrisy: Playing nice with a demonstrably inept, petty, and heartless leader was a path to power. As a result, the author’s chronicle of the Trump era, from the early debates through the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, is light on analysis and heavier on portraits of the cowards. For example, a panicky Spicer, Trump’s first lie-peddling press secretary, demanded that Leibovich not write that he puts on makeup before going on TV. Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions steps into the attorney general role “terrified and shaken, like a beagle in a thunderstorm.” Former House Speaker Paul Ryan recalls sobbing over the Capitol insurrection while dodging his complicity in Trump’s rise. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham proves the most craven of all, if more honest about his consistent aspiration to “try to be relevant.” GOP push back, when it existed, came from those who had little to lose politically (Mitt Romney), were near death (John McCain), or principled enough to jump ship (Liz Cheney). Leibovich ably captures this milieu, and he's cleareyed about Trump’s dangers. However, that awareness sometimes clashes with his breezy, Twitter-dunk-style delivery, which emphasizes the sideshow at the expense of the crisis. Now that the GOP is more cult than political party, one former Republican congressman noted that its main approach to Trump is “just waiting for him to die,” a strategy more pathetic than funny.

Pub Date: July 12, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-593-29631-8

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Penguin Press

Review Posted Online: July 19, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022

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More by Mark Leibovich

BOOK REVIEW

by Mark Leibovich

GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.

It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty , 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0

Page Count: 432

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

More About This Book

Bill Gates Shares His Summer Reading List

SEEN & HEARD

SORRY NOT SORRY

by Alyssa Milano ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 26, 2021

The choir is sure to enjoy this impassioned preaching on familiar progressive themes.

Essays on current political topics by a high-profile actor and activist.

Milano explains in an introduction that she began writing this uneven collection while dealing with a severe case of Covid-19 and suffering from "persistent brain fog.” In the first essay, "On Being Unapologetically Fucked Up,” the author begins by fuming over a February 2019 incident in which she compared MAGA caps worn by high school kids to KKK hoods. She then runs through a grab bag of flash-point news items (police shootings, border crimes, sexual predators in government), deploying the F-bomb with abandon and concluding, "What I know is that fucked up is as fundamental a state of the world as night and day. But I know there is better. I know that ‘less fucked up’ is a state we can live in.” The second essay, "Believe Women," discusses Milano’s seminal role in the MeToo movement; unfortunately, it is similarly conversational in tone and predictable in content. One of the few truly personal essays, "David," about the author's marriage, refutes the old saw about love meaning never having to say you're sorry, replacing it with "Love means you can suggest a national sex strike and your husband doesn't run away screaming." Milano assumes, perhaps rightly, that her audience is composed of followers and fans; perhaps these readers will know what she is talking about in the seemingly allegorical "By Any Other Name," about her bad experience with a certain rosebush. "Holy shit, giving birth sucked," begins one essay. "Words are weird, right?" begins the next. "Welp, this is going to piss some of you off. Hang in there," opens a screed about cancel culture—though she’s entirely correct that “it’s childish, divisive, conceited, and Trumpian to its core.” By the end, however, Milano's intelligence, compassion, integrity, and endurance somewhat compensate for her lack of literary polish.

Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-593-18329-8

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | POLITICS

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Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission Hardcover – July 12 2022

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Print length 352 pages
Language English
Publisher Penguin Press
Publication date July 12 2022
Dimensions 16.41 x 2.97 x 24.23 cm
ISBN-10 0593296311
ISBN-13 978-0593296318
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Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Press (July 12 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593296311
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593296318
Item weight ‏ : ‎ 595 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16.41 x 2.97 x 24.23 cm
#115 in Political Parties (Books)
#282 in U.S. Politics
#1,493 in Government (Books)

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Mark leibovich.

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Thank You for Your Servitude
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Review: "Thank You for Your Servitude," by Mark Leibovich
In this hopeful novel, triplets help save their small town after discovering that their new neighbors are behind the company polluting its river and poisoning its residents. Our reviewer, Janice Y ...
Thank You For Your Servitude review
Like any good clip job, the book does include a few good lines - all of them from stories generated by others. Trump's second secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, was "like a heat-seeking ...
'Thank You for Your Servitude' casts harsh light on GOP's shift ...
Getting darker. Near the end of Thank You, Leibovich shifts the emphasis in his title. Having ridiculed Republicans for their servitude to Trump he raises the darker implications of the term ...
Thank You For Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington…
This book, Thank You For Your Servitude, is an examination of the Republican Party during the Trump administration. In short, the book asks why so many Republicans failed to stop Trump's takeover of their party. ... The book is excellent. My 4-star review (instead of 5) is more about the reader, not the author. Having finished the book, I can't ...
Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington and the Price
"Thank You for Your Servitude" takes us inside Washington and shares his observations, plus those of top GOP leaders who can offer candid and sometimes negative thoughts bout Trump in private.The book begins in August 2015, up to more recent events in March 2022.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVITUDE
Now that the GOP is more cult than political party, one former Republican congressman noted that its main approach to Trump is "just waiting for him to die," a strategy more pathetic than funny. A thorough if sometimes glib account of a disastrous presidency. Pub Date: July 12, 2022. ISBN: 978--593-29631-8. Page Count: 352.
Thank You for Your Servitude by Mark Leibovich: 9780593296318
About Thank You for Your Servitude. The #1 New York Times Bestseller "He's one of the best chroniclers of politics today." -Jake Tapper "This is a really funny book." -Kara Swisher "His writing is so damn good." -John Berman
The Nihilism of Trump's Republican 'Collaborators'
A Q&A with the author on the various ways the Republican subjects of his new book, Thank You for Your Servitude, revealed themselves. By Gal Beckerman. Getty; The Atlantic. July 13, 2022.
Book review of Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington
In his new book, "Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission," he uses caustic quotation marks around his occasional attempts to "understand" his ...
a book review by Joseph Barbato: Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald
"Often viciously funny, this book is a breezy balm for the anti-Trump crowd." In his last book, This Town, a bestseller, Mark Leibovich offered an amusing view of the Washington, D.C., political merry-go-round, which he covered for years as chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine.Now comes Thank You for Your Servitude, which focuses on the Establishment Republicans who ...
Mark Leibovich Takes Aim at Trump Sycophants in New Book
Now He's Taking on Trump's Biggest Sycophants. "This is not a Trump book," Mark Leibovich says of his new book Thank You For Your Servitude. "This is a book about people that permitted it ...
Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump's ...
From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller This Town, the eyewitness account of how the GOP collaborated with Donald Trump to transform Washington's "swamp" into a gold-plated hot tub—and a onetime party of rugged individualists into a sycophantic personality cult.. In the early months of Trump's candidacy, the Republican Party's most important figures, people such as ...
‎Thank You for Your Servitude on Apple Books
Download and read the ebook version of Thank You for Your Servitude by Mark Leibovich on Apple Books. The #1 New York Times Bestseller "He's one of the best chroniclers of politics t ... "The new must read summer book." -Stephanie Ruhle ... Customer Reviews. nmp apps , 08/24/2022. The Making of the Toddler-In-Chief
Blind loyalty is helping sustain Trump's power in the Republican ...
Blind loyalty is helping sustain Trump's power in the Republican party, new book says. NPR's Juana Summers talks with journalist Mark Leibovich about his new book Thank You for Your Servitude ...
Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington and the Price
Amazon.com: Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission: 9780593296318: Leibovich, ... (to some extent at least) by the enormity of Trump's threat." —New York Times Book Review "[Leibovich is] just so good at this. He is a world-class ranter, continuing an American tradition that includes such ...
Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump's ...
Thank You for Your Servitude isn't another view from the Oval Office: it's the view from the Trump Hotel. We can check out any time we want, but only time will tell if we can ever leave. ... (to some extent at least) by the enormity of Trump's threat." —New York Times Book Review "[Leibovich is] just so good at this. He is a world ...
Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington and the Price
Amazon.com: Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission (Audible Audio Edition): Mark Leibovich, Joe Barrett, ... *Note - I have no political party affiliation, and I always try to review books from a neutral political perspective. I focus only on the content of the book, not the politics of the author*
Thank You for Your Servitude
Penguin Press. Publication date. July 12, 2022. ( 2022-07-12) Pages. 352. ISBN. 9780593296318. Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission is a 2022 book by Mark Leibovich on relations within the United States Republican Party during the Trump administration .
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVITUDE
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Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald
Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission at Amazon.com. Read honest and unbiased ... and I always try to review books from a neutral political perspective. I focus only on the content of the book, not the politics of the author* This book is divided ...
Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington and the Price
Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission: Leibovich, Mark: 9780593296318: ... (to some extent at least) by the enormity of Trump's threat." —New York Times Book Review "[Leibovich is] just so good at this. He is a world-class ranter, continuing an American tradition that includes such dyspeptic ...

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Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission Hardcover – July 12 2022

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