After the Iraq war and the Great Recession, public trust in government plummeted while the flashpoints of race, religion and education moved to the fore. Barack Obama’s mantra of hope and change left many unsatisfied, if not seething. On election day 2016, Donald Trump lit a match. But the kindling was already there, decades in the making.
Staring at the mess is Jeremy Peters of the New York Times, with Insurgency, his first book. A seasoned national political reporter and MSNBC talking head, Peters chronicles how the party of Lincoln and Reagan morphed into Trump’s own fiefdom. He writes with a keen eye and sharp pen. Beyond that, he listens.
He captures the grievance of the Republican base, its devotion to the 45th president and its varied voices. He repeatedly delivers quotable quotes, painstakingly sourced. This is highly readable reporting.
At the outset, Peters acknowledges Trump’s grasp of human nature, the media and resentment. Messaging and visuals matter to Trump, as does cementing a bond with his crowds. Fittingly, one chapter is titled “Give Them What They Want …”
For many, Trump did so. As president, he kept campaign-trail promises. He reshaped the supreme court, moved the US embassy to Jerusalem and battled Isis.
Most of all, he stuck a barbed middle finger at political correctness. His jagged edges thrilled his core as they elicited revulsion elsewhere – just as he wanted. His persona was Melania’s problem, not theirs.
Trump rode into the White House on enmity to immigration, the sleeper issue of our times, over which Democrats continue to stumble. Chants of “build that wall” delivered far more votes than “defund the police”.
Trump’s mien mattered too, as Peters notes. He was relatable to working Americans. He knew where wokeness was grating, that what passes as orthodoxy in the halls of academe is not applauded by kitchen table or barstool America.
“Trump’s Latino Support Was More Widespread Than Thought, Report Finds,” a Times headline announced. It was Bernie Sanders, not Joe Biden, who led among those voters in the Democratic primaries of 2020. Right now, polls show Trump ahead of Biden in that bloc. Biden’s standing has also slipped among younger Black voters.
From Peters’ vantage point, Trump’s description of himself as a “popularist” – an unintended malapropism – comes close to the mark. Trump can size up an audience, meet expectations and receive their adulation. For all concerned, it’s a win-win proposition.
Peters gets people on the record. Per usual, Steve Bannon is there on the page, where he rates his former boss among the worst presidents with James Buchanan and Millard Filmore. Those two failed to halt the march to civil war.
Bannon also likens Trump’s history-making escalator ride to Triumph of the Will, Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi propaganda film. “That’s Hitler, Bannon thought”, as Trump descended to a bank of cameras and microphones. Peters memorializes those italicized words as another chapter title.
Elsewhere, Bannon posits that for Trump it’s all about himself, and he would be pleased to see a Republican successor fail.
“Trump doesn’t give a shit,” Bannon says. “He’s not looking to nurture. He’s fucking Donald Trump, the only guy who could do it.
As for Trump, he talks to Peters and his observations are frequently dead-on. Most of all, he internalized that Republican success hinged on the white working-class base, a reality to which most other GOP politicians paid lip service.
Offering tax cuts to the rich while plundering entitlements didn’t quite cut it. Sure, race and culture were part of Trump’s equation. But so was preserving social security and Medicare. Voters could not be expected to support candidates who took away things they had earned.
The priorities of the Republican donor class did not align with those of the swing voters who seized on Trump. In the heartland, corporations definitely aren’t considered “people” – a lesson Mitt Romney failed to learn in 2012.
A country club candidate who looked and sounded like a country club candidate might win the nomination but stood to lose in November. George HW Bush, remember, eked out a single term after eight years as vice-president to Ronald Reagan.
Peters relates that Trump pushed back hard when Paul Ryan, the former House speaker and Romney’s running mate, suggested curbing government-funded retirement spending.
“You tried that four years ago,” Trump told him. “How’d that work out?”
For good measure, Trump snapped: “No thank you.”
Insurgency also documents the capitulation of those Republicans who stood ready to take on the mob as it swarmed the Capitol on January 6 but then, hours later, voted against certifying the election.
Peters tells of Ronny Jackson, a retired navy rear admiral who was White House physician to Trump and Barack Obama. When the glass started to shatter, Jackson removed his tie – so it would be that much more difficult to strangle him. But Jackson’s loyalty to Trump remained. He voted to discount the results, despite all he saw. Now, Jackson demands Biden’s mental fitness be tested.
Trump stokes the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. No matter, in Republican ranks at least. Fidelity to Trump and his false claims are “musts” for the foreseeable future. Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell, at odds with Trump this week, are at some political risk.
Pence refused to defy his legal mandate and reject electoral college results. He sticks by his decision. Of January 6, deemed “legitimate political discourse” by the Republican National Committee, McConnell bluntly says: “It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent a peaceful transfer of power.”
Peters sees the dark clouds. His book is chilling.
Insurgency: How Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Ever Wanted is published in the US by Crown
