THE PERSUASION GAME

Although candidate Donald Trump “vowed to drain the influence peddling swamp in Washington, DC,” author Lewis asserts in the book’s introduction, “he did the exact opposite” as president. Particularly egregious is the administration’s intermingling of corporate and foreign interests, which, the author says, benefited many with access to the Oval Office. As an advisor to the president, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani ran a “parallel version of the State Department,” according to Lewis, which leveraged his connections to develop ties with regimes in Turkey, Russia, and Venezuela. The author asserts that Guiliani and his associates skirted regulations that had been in place since the 1930s passage of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and adopted autocratic tactics inside the American political system. Per the book’s convincing analysis, the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection was a “natural outcome of the never-ending persuasion games that occurred during Trump’s presidency,” as the administration effectively created an alternate reality via disinformation that played upon his supporters’ worst fears and biases. Lewis, a global traveler who once resided in Russia, writes that he first noticed early signs of what he deemed to be Russian interference in American politics after seeing social media accounts parrot “Putin’s talking points” with “English grammar mistakes common for Russian speakers.” Although the author doesn’t hold back on its critiques of Trump administration tactics, his book’s main strength is its painstaking research, which yielded more than 3,000 endnotes. There’s also a laudable dedication to accessibility, as readers unacquainted with the nuances of contemporary geopolitics will find this book’s explanations clear and concise. To that end, Lewis supplements his engaging narrative with a wealth of charts, reproductions of primary sources, textbox vignettes, and other visual elements. A comprehensive timeline of cited administration connections to Turkey, Russia, Ukraine, and Venezuela appears in a useful appendix.