Although candidate Donald Trump \u201cvowed to drain the influence peddling swamp in Washington, DC,\u201d author Lewis asserts in the book\u2019s introduction, \u201che did the exact opposite\u201d as president. Particularly egregious is the administration\u2019s 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 \u201cparallel version of the State Department,\u201d 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\u2019s convincing analysis, the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection was a \u201cnatural outcome of the never-ending persuasion games that occurred during Trump\u2019s presidency,\u201d as the administration effectively created an alternate reality via disinformation that played upon his supporters\u2019 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 \u201cPutin\u2019s talking points\u201d with \u201cEnglish grammar mistakes common for Russian speakers.\u201d Although the author doesn\u2019t hold back on its critiques of Trump administration tactics, his book\u2019s main strength is its painstaking research, which yielded more than 3,000 endnotes. There\u2019s also a laudable dedication to accessibility, as readers unacquainted with the nuances of contemporary geopolitics will find this book\u2019s 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.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Although candidate Donald Trump \u201cvowed to drain the influence peddling swamp in Washington, DC,\u201d author Lewis asserts in the book\u2019s introduction, \u201che did the exact opposite\u201d as president. Particularly egregious is the administration\u2019s intermingling of corporate and foreign interests, which, the author says, benefited many with access to the Oval Office. As an advisor to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2449"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}