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.”
