I’m not exactly sure how to write what I am going to write today without coming across like some old, tired, opinionated liberal who can’t stand when someone gets up and says, ‘Gee, I should have known better than to back Donald Trump,’ but I’ll give it a try.
In this instance I’m referring to yesterday’s interview in The Failing New York Times with Cassidy Hutchinson, whose so-called memoir about her years in the White House is being published by Simon & Schuster, which means she starts off with the NYT interview and will doubtless soon embark on the requisite national book tour.
I did a book tour back in 1984 or 1985 when Basic Books published a study I did on Jewish immigrants in New York. At one point I gave a talk at the Jewish Community Center in Columbus, OH, a large edifice built by Les Wexner who founded The Limited clothing chain and more recently hired the late, lamented Jeffery Epstein to manage his financial affairs. The building had no less than three, large auditoriums – while I was speaking in one, Weightwatchers was in another and a guy selling hair lotions was in the third. Oh well, back to Cassidy.
First of all, I get really pissed off when someone who has reached the blessed age of 26 years puts out what is referred to in the press release as a ‘memoir.’ To me, a memoir is something you write near the end of your life when you have the experience and perspective to explain what you did in the context of what other people have done.
How much experience and perspective on anything would someone at the age of 26 have? Nothing. Not one, goddamn thing.
Hutchinson went from what used to be a two-year community college in Virginia to what is now a four-year school ranked 60th best in the South to an internship first with Ted Cruz, then another internship with Steve Scalise and then to a full-time gig on the White House staff beginning in 2018. Pardon me for being just another elitist, stuck-up liberal from the Communist Northeast, but ranking #60 in a part of the country which has the highest percentage of adults who never finished high school doesn’t mean very much.
Anyway, so here’s this kid who starts working in the Trump White House when she’s 22 years old and of course she’s going to love her job. I can just see her showing her parents around the West Wing of the White House and maybe getting them a peek into the Oval Office when Trump-o isn’t there.
Which means just about any time during the 24-hour day because other than posing for a picture when he signed one of those nonsense Executive Orders, Trump was almost never in the Oval Office or anywhere else where he might have to do something other than talking on the phone to his communications team at Fox News or watching Fake News programs on CNN or MS-NBC.
All of a sudden, Hutchinson finds herself in the middle of a big mess known as January 6th. How did she react to the fact that her boss, Mark Meadows, was right in the midst of all the planning to get Mike Pence to not count certain Electoral College votes? She went right along with the entire scheme and even tried to get a job at Mar-a-Lago after Trump was sent packing home.
According to the NYT interview, Hutchinson still can’t explain how or why she fell head over heels for the MAGA approach, and for all I know, she’s still devoted to Orange Shithead today. The fact that she didn’t lie when she testified under subpoena before Congress? Sorry, but I don’t think that telling the truth after you’re sworn in is such a big, noble deal.
The head of Simon & Schuster has to know that he’s publishing a book which simply can’t be taken very seriously, even if it has a description of how Rudy Giuliani tried to cop a quick feel from the author during Trump’s speech on January 6th. Here’s how the PR Department at S&S describes this very important work: “This book is about trauma, and about trying to overcome trauma. And it was written in the white heat of the moment.”
Wrong. What this ‘memoir’ is about is yet another attempt by a member of the Trump marketing gang to make herself a quick buck. If that’s what GOP politics have become, to quote Grandpa, ‘a be gezunt’ (read: good for them.)
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